Probabilistic Robustness Analysis of Drag-Free Attitude Control System using Polynomial Chaos

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Mario Izquierdo Serra - , Airbus Defence and Space GmbH (Author)
  • Maurice Martin - , Airbus Defence and Space GmbH (Author)
  • Simon Delchambre - , Airbus Group (Author)
  • Stefan Winkler - , Airbus Defence and Space GmbH (Author)
  • Harald Pfifer - , Chair of Flight Mechanics and Control (Author)

Abstract

The verification and validation process of Drag-Free Attitude Control Systems (DFACS) accounts for the majority of the overall time and costs in the development of current space missions. Showing robustness of the system against uncertainties constitutes a key aspect in this process. This paper presents a probabilistic robustness analysis approach that employs a linear fractional transformation based polynomial chaos expansion. In this approach, a surrogate model is obtained that is used to verify DFACS performance metrics against given requirements in the presence of uncertainties. This approach is compared to the default one in industry, which relies on large-scale simulation-based Monte Carlo campaigns. A high-fidelity DFACS benchmark derived from a challenging real-world mission such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna mission is used as an application case. The results on a realistic mission scenario show that this alternative probabilistic robustness analysis offers computational efficiency when compared to Monte Carlo. The Monte Carlo results can be faithfully reproduced at a fraction of the computational time, offering a promising alternative to complement the industrial verification and validation process.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-9
Number of pages9
JournalJournal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics
Volume49
Issue number4
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 31 Dec 2025
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0001-6734-704X/work/208794573
Mendeley 6f71cf9c-95dd-3e97-b5a1-37cc7d0dc598

Keywords