4. Conclusions

This chapter investigated a piecewise parallel onboard optimal control algorithm to solve the optimal control issues in complex nonlinear dynamic systems in aerospace engineering. To test the validity of the proposed two-phase optimal control scheme, the long-term tether libration stability and fast nano-satellite deorbit under complex environmental perturbations and the libration suppression for PSE system are considered. For EDT system, instead of optimizing the control of fast and stable nano-satellite deorbit over the complete process, the current approach divides the deorbit process into a set of intervals. For the PSE system, each time interval is set depends on the minimize transfer time for equal transfer length interval. Within each interval, the predicting phase simplifies significantly the optimal control problem. The dynamic equations of libration motion are further simplified to reduce computational loads using the simple dynamic models. The trajectory of the stable libration states and current control input is then optimized for the fast deorbit within the interval based on the simplified dynamic equations. The tracking optimizes the trajectory tracking control using the finite receding horizon control theory within the time interval corresponding to the open-loop control state trajectory with the same interval number. By applying the close-loop control modification, the system motions are integrated without any simplification of the dynamics or environmental perturbations and the instantaneous states of the orbital and libration motions. The i-th time interval's closed-loop tracking is processed in tracking phase while the

χ

(i + 1)-th time interval's optimal state trajectory is predicted in the predicting phase. This prediction is based on the error between the real state and the predicting state in the (i-1)-th time interval. By repeating the process, the optimal control problem can be achieved in a piecewise way with dramatically reduced computation effort. Compared with the current on–off control where the stable libration motion is the only control target, numerical results show that the proposed optimal control scheme works well in keeping the libration angles within an allowed limit.
