Decentralized sliding mode control for a spacecraft flexible appendage based on finite element method

This paper is devoted to study the application of the decentralized sliding mode control method, which is used to reduce the vibration of large spacecraft flexible appendage. In the process of control design, the sliding surface of sliding mode control is determined by minimizing the optimal cost function, and the controller is the saturation controller. The controlled structure is subject to arbitrary, unmeasurable and uncertainty disturbance forces and initial displacement. The decentralized control method and the centralized control method are used to control vibration of the structure respectively. When the system is subjected to the initial displacement or external disturbance, the computer simulation shows that both of these control methods perform effectively, but the number of Riccati equation of the decentralized method is far smaller than that of centralized control method, especially in a large system.