Static Imbalance Reduction on the Reaction Wheel

Reaction wheel is a kind of satellite attitude actuators to produce the torque by changing its wheel speed. Due to the imbalances of mass distribution in rotating wheel, torque and force disturbances are inherent in this type of actuators. Major disturbances are mainly due to static imbalance, which must be reduced on the stage of wheel manufacturing and test. An identification method for the location and magnitude of the imbalance is suggested using the measured data on the torque/force measurement table. Corrections of the imbalance are performed by adding the counter balancing mass, of which the magnitude and position is calculated from the identification procedure. After successive balancing steps, the static imbalance is remarkably reduced.