Design of a Tensegrity Control Moment Gyroscope

Abstract

The focus of this thesis will be the development of a tensegrity flywheel with the goal of minimizing the mass while achieving the desired amount of angular momentum for attitude control of a spacecraft. Currently, flywheels are designed using a continuum of material to achieve the desired amount of angular momentum due to the large gyroscopic forces and torques that the flywheel has to withstand, but this thesis will show that a continuum flywheel is not necessary to withstand these large gyroscopic forces and torques and still have the capability of meeting angular momentum and torque requirements. With a discrete approach, a large percentage of mass can be saved when compared to the current designs because the mass near the continuum wheel’s spin axis does not contribute significantly to the angular momentum output. If a percentage of the mass near the center could be moved to the edge and replaced with a high strength to weight ratio structure, the mass of the flywheel could be reduced and the stored energy could be increased. This would save a significant amount of money when sending attitude control systems into space that utilize flywheels such as reaction wheels and control moment gyroscopes. The design proposed for this thesis will implement tensegrity to reduce the mass of the flywheel when compared to the current continuum designs. Two separate topologies will be analyzed in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional space and the results will show that utilizing a tensegrity design can significantly reduce mass of a flywheel.