Development of a reliable and low cost miniaturized Reaction Wheel System for CubeSat applications

Ricardo Filipe Pereira Gomes

Key information

Authors:

Ricardo Filipe Pereira Gomes (Ricardo Filipe Pereira Gomes)

Supervisors:

Afzal Suleman (Afzal Suleman)

Published in

04/20/2016

Abstract

Stringent mission and payload designs in CubeSats, which are a type of miniaturized satellite for space research, require faster and more accurate pointing systems. These requirements can only be achieved by using reaction wheels for attitude control purposes. The thesis presents the design and development of a Reaction Wheel System (RWS) to be integrated on ECOSat-III mission, currently under development at the University of Victoria. The proposed design feature will enable a new classes of missions currently difficult to achieve. The optimal design, reliability analysis, and construction of a miniaturized reaction wheel prototype using a commercial off-the-shelf brushless DC (BLDC) motor is presented. The hardware design is described, with emphasis on the disk-rim flywheel design and on the RWS arrangement for minimum power consumption. Its mass is minimized subject to constraints on the required moment of inertia, flywheel thickness and type of material used. The required torque and the maximum external disturbance torque acting on the satellite are estimated. The dynamics simulation has shown negligible systemic torque disturbances. A simpler model of a BLDC motor is presented in order to model the RWS. The determination of the mean time to failure is also one of the objectives of the thesis. Finally, a fully functional prototype, which satisfies all the constrains and requirements, is presented as well as all the tests performed to demonstrate the effectiveness and the reliability of the RWS to be integrated in the ECOSat-III micro-satellite.