Integrated Structural and Control Optimization

摘要

This paper focuses on the integrated structural/control optimization of a large space structure with a robot arm subject to the gravity-gradient torque through a semi-analytical approach. It is well known that the computer effort to compute numerically derivatives of the constraints with respect to design variables makes the process expensive and time-consuming. In this sense, a semi-analytical approach may represent a good alternative when optimizing systems that require sensitivity calculations with respect to design parameters. In this study, constraints from the structure and control disciplines are imposed on the optimization process with the aim of obtaining the structure’s minimum weight and the optimum control performance. In the process optimization, the sensitivity of the constraints is computed by a semi-analytical approach. This approach combines the use of analytical derivatives of the mass and stiffness matrices with the numerical solution of the eigenvalue problem to obtain the eigenvalue derivative with respect to the design variables. The analytical derivatives are easy to obtain since our space structure is a long one-dimensional beam-like spacecraft.