Dynamics and Control of Mass-Variable Liquid-Filled Spacecraft With Combined Nonlinear Slosh

This article focuses on the dynamics and control of liquid-filled spacecraft with nonlinear slosh in multitank, wherein the effect of liquid propellant consumption is considered. An improved parameter-variable three degree of freedom (3DOF)-rigid-pendulum slosh model is adopted to equivalently simulate the nonlinear slosh, including large-amplitude lateral sloshing and rotary sloshing, in partially filled spherical tanks. First, the translation-rotation dynamics of a spacecraft with combined slosh in 2-tank is derived by using the Lagrangian formulation. Second, the dynamic responses of the spacecraft coupled with combined nonlinear slosh are simulated by giving large-angle attitude maneuvering cases and zero-impulse translation maneuvering cases. Third, a wave-based attitude controller of the liquid-filled spacecraft is designed. It is found that the combined propellant slosh can disturb the rigid-body motion (translation and rotation) of spacecraft with obvious jitter in certain directions, that the propellant consumption is likely to cause the nonconvergence of the translation motion of spacecraft during zero-momentum maneuvering, and that the jitter disturbance of propellant slosh on the attitude motion of spacecraft can be absorbed by using the designed wave-based