Articles | Volume 8, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/ms-8-51-2017
https://doi.org/10.5194/ms-8-51-2017
Research article
 | 
20 Mar 2017
Research article |  | 20 Mar 2017

Research on a Hierarchical and Simultaneous Gravity Unloading Method for Antenna Pointing Mechanism

Guoyong Yang, Hongguang Wang, Jizhong Xiao, Zuowei Wang, and Lie Ling

Abstract. This paper presents a hierarchical and simultaneous gravity unloading method. An air bearing gravity unloading facility for two-orthogonal-axis antenna pointing mechanism (APM) is designed based on this method. This method is proposed based on the characteristics analysis of the two-orthogonal-axis APM and air bearings. The mechanism of the hierarchical and simultaneous gravity unloading method is described in detail. It solves the coupling problem of two axes and unloads the gravity of both joints hierarchically and simultaneously. The air bearing gravity unloading facility which is a structure mechanism with two layers based on this method is designed with planar air bearing and air spindle. The structure of the facility is described in detail. The dynamic models of the APM with its load in space environment and on the air bearing gravity unloading facility are derived respectively. With the analysing of the driving torques and vertical forces of the APM joints in both models, the results demonstrate that the gravity unloading facility can simulate the microgravity environment successfully. This conclusion is also proved by the dynamic simulation with ADAMS software. The simulation also provides some optimization targets for the gravity unloading facility. At last, the gravity unloading facility is established and some experiments are done. The dynamic models, the simulation results and the experiments all show the effectiveness of the hierarchical and simultaneous gravity unloading method.

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Short summary
This paper presents a gravity unloading facility to simulate micro-gravity environment of space. The facility unloads the gravity of artificial antenna of satellite and its pointing mechanism to test the performance of the pointing mechanism on the ground. The facility consists of two layers to unload gravity hierarchically and simultaneously while the antenna pointing mechanism consists of two joints. The calculation, simulation and experiments all show the effectiveness of the method applied.