Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

ADVANCED FLIGHT MECHANICS

2023-2024

Homework #2

Stability analysis of pure spin motion of the

CubeSat

Enrique Villa Coronado

1. Introduction

The purpose of this report is to present the stability analysis of pure spin motion of the CubeSat,
after having studied the torque free motion of the CubeSat in Homework 1 by the use of
Simulink. Thus, the dynamics continue being the same but with the peculiarity that a small
disturbance is introduced to the system in the x-z plane where 𝛿𝜔𝑥 , 𝛿𝜔𝑧 ≪ 1.
This analysis will be performed with the small disturbance theory.

1.1 Linearization of the attitude equations

The equations of the attitude motion defined and implemented in Simulink in Homework 1 are
the following:

𝐼𝑥 𝜔̇ 𝑥 = (𝐼𝑦 − 𝐼𝑧 )𝜔𝑦 𝜔𝑧

𝐼𝑦 𝜔̇ 𝑦 = (𝐼𝑧 − 𝐼𝑥 )𝜔𝑥 𝜔𝑧

𝐼𝑧 𝜔̇ 𝑧 = (𝐼𝑥 − 𝐼𝑦 )𝜔𝑥 𝜔𝑦

These equations can be studied by implementing small disturbance theory for the disturbances
in the angular motion already presented in the introduction (assuming that the variations in the
x-z plane are small from the reference condition):
𝜔𝑥 = 𝛿𝜔𝑥
𝜔𝑦 = 𝜔0𝑦

𝜔𝑧 = 𝛿𝜔𝑧

Therefore, the linearized system (𝑥̇ = 𝐴𝑥 + 𝑏) will be the following:

𝐼𝑦 − 𝐼𝑧
0
𝑑 𝛿𝜔𝑥 𝐼𝑥 𝛿𝜔𝑥
[ ] = 𝜔 0𝑦 𝐼 − 𝐼 [ ]
𝑑𝑡 𝛿𝜔𝑧 𝑥 𝑦 𝛿𝜔𝑧
0
( 𝑧 𝐼 )

Note that there is not constant expression (𝑏) in this particular exercise and the y-axis is not
included as there is no interest in analyzing its constant angular velocity.
2.1 Results of the simulation

The results from the Simulink simulation are the following:

As can be seen, the behavior of the system is a periodic motion (function of cosines/sines) and
no dumping (the real part of the eigenvalues is null):
𝜆1,2 = ±0.8868𝑖

This movement is called “marginally stable” where the stability parameters, natural frequency
(𝜔𝑛 ) and dumping ratio (ζ) are:
𝑟𝑎𝑑
𝜔𝑛 = |𝜆1,2 | = 0.8868
𝑠
ζ=0
By applying an initial values of 𝜔0𝑥 = 𝜔0𝑧 = 10−6 𝑟𝑎𝑑/𝑠 in the analytical model from
Homework 1, the results of the linearized model can be compared to those of the analytical
solution:

The behavior of both systems is the same regarding the periodicity of the x-z angular velocities.
However as the initial conditions are not exactly the same for both systems, the values of those
angular velocities, are not the same. It’s also important to note that 𝛿𝜔0𝑦 = 0 in the analytical
model as well.