Control of Reflector Vibrations in Large Spaceborne Antennas by Means of Movable Dampers

A simple approach to the design of feedback controls for damping the vibrations in large spaceborne antennas with flexible dish reflectors is proposed. The feedback controls consist of movable velocity-feedback dampers whose positions are determined by minimizing the rate of change of total vibrational energy at any time. The performance of the proposed feedback controls is studied via computer simulations.