Reduction of satellite flywheel microvibration using rubber shock absorbers

Microvibration of flywheels strongly affects the imaging quality of space cameras. A passive vibration method is used in this study to reduce the effect of microvibration. A rubber shock absorber was designed and installed on a satellite. The angular displacement of the second mirror was measured via a fiber optic gyroscopic method. The measured data were imported into MATLAB and analyzed by different methods. The data was plotted as a root-mean-square graph of angular displacement at different speeds along the x-axis, a waterfall plot of the attenuation of force in the x direction, the vibration spectrum between the frequency and displacement amplitude, and the time domain response of the inverse Fourier transform of the spectrum. The results show that the microvibration of the flywheel causes significant vibration of the imaging system, and that adding a rubber shock absorber can reduce the vibration. The proposed method is a new attempt to analyze microvibration, and can be applied to the engineering design of flywheels.