Design and Modeling of Micro-vibration Isolation for Spacecraft Flywheel

In this paper, we focus on designing micro-vibration isolation platform for a typical kind spacecraft flywheel. Firstly, a passive isolation platform is proposed according to the disturbance characteristics of the flywheel. This platform incorporates both advantages of folded-beam-like isolators and rod-like isolation struts, and thereby achieving a multi-axis isolation. Secondly, we develop theoretical models to describe the coupled dynamics of the integrated isolation system that made up of the flywheel and isolation platform. This model can be well used to analyze the dynamics of flywheel isolation system and predict the isolation performance. Finally, we investigate the coupled dynamics and micro-vibration responses of the coupled isolation system using both experiments and simulation methods. Comparisons are conducted between the tests and simulations, and good match is achieved, which means the theoretical model developed in this paper can be extended to applications in flywheel isolation design and analysis. In the meanwhile, the isolation performance is also verified by comparing the output disturbances of with and without the proposed isolation platform.