Quasi-Optimal Braking of Rotations of a Body with a Moving Mass Coupled to It through a Quadratic Friction Damper in a Resisting Medium

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of the time-optimal braking of rotations of a dynamically symmetric rigid body under a small control moment in the ellipsoidal range with close unequal values of the ellipsoid’s semiaxes. This problem is considered a problem of quasi-optimal control. The body is assumed to have a moving mass connected to it through elastic coupling with quadratic dissipation. In addition, the body is exposed to a small braking moment of the linear resistance of the medium. The problem of synthesizing the quasi-optimal braking of the rotations of a dynamically symmetric body in a resisting medium is investigated analytically and numerically. An approximate solution is found by the phase-averaging of the processional motion. The qualitative properties of quasi-optimal motion are analyzed and the corresponding graphs are presented.