Engineering topics

Whorton, M.

Publications and source records attributed to Whorton, M..

2 records

NASA NTRS1994

Development of homotopy algorithms for fixed-order mixed H2/H(infinity) controller synthesis

A major difficulty associated with H-infinity and mu-synthesis methods is the order of the resulting compensator. Whereas model and/or controller reduction techniques are sometimes applied, performance and robustness properties are not preserved. By directly constraining compensator order during the optimization process, these properties are better preserved, albeit at the expense of computational complexity. This paper presents a novel homotopy algorithm to synthesize fixed-order mixed H2/H-infinity compensators. Numerical results are presented for a four-disk flexible structure to evaluate the efficiency of the algorithm.

Whorton, M.↗

NASA NTRS1991

A simulation of the instrument pointing system for the Astro-1 mission

NASA has recently completed a shuttle-borne stellar ultraviolet astronomy mission known as Astro-1. A three axis instrument pointing system (IPS) was employed to accurately point the science instruments. In order to analyze the pointing control system and verify pointing performance, a simulation of the IPS was developed using the multibody dynamics software TREETOPS. The TREETOPS IPS simulation is capable of accurately modeling the multibody IPS system undergoing large angle, nonlinear motion. The simulation is documented and example cases are presented demonstrating disturbance rejection, fine pointing operations, and multiple target pointing and slewing of the IPS.

Whorton, M.↗