Combined Energy Storage and Active Attitude–Vibration Control for Large Flexible Satellite

Advanced satellites with large flexible antennas promote Earth observation by enabling wide coverage and high–resolution imaging. These deployable structures with low stiffness and large rotational inertia are particularly susceptible to space disturbances and prone to structural vibrations. In this case, centralized control schemes can be ineffective, and faults in distributed actuators rapidly degrade system performance, jeopardizing mission success. Thus, this paper proposes a new game–based distributed control strategy of fault–tolerant attitude–vibration control for a large flexible satellite. First, the coupled dynamic model of distributed gyroelastic structures with actuator faults are established using the Lagrangian method. Then, a Stackelberg game control framework is developed. An attitude controller acts as the leader, while vibration and fault–tolerant controllers are the followers. Optimal feedback and saturated sliding–mode approaches are adopted for stable attitude–vibration control, and an alternating direction method of multipliers adaptively reallocates actuator output torques across distributed nodes under failure conditions. Comparative simulations validate the proposed strategy’s significant superiority in satellite attitude stabilization and vibration suppression, and demonstrate its enhanced resilience to actuator failures, thereby improving the overall system robustness. These findings indicate considerable potential for future applications in large flexible satellites.