Andrew James Sinclair
Dr. Andrew Sinclair is a Senior Aerospace Engineer in the Spacecraft Component Technology Branch of the Space Vehicles Directorate at AFRL. He received his PhD in aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University in 2005, and was a faculty member at Auburn University from 2005 to 2016. His background is in Guidance, Navigation, and Control. His research interests focus on spacecraft dynamics and how improved understanding of these dynamics enables improved guidance, navigation, and control.
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AFRL Scholars Program
Attitude control of flexible-body spacecraft (Internship)
Recent advancements in deployable structures are enabling mission concepts for large deployable apertures, i.e. antennas and solar panels. However, large deployable structures can have high flexibility, with modal frequencies approaching the bandwidth requirements for even low-precision attitude control. The fact that the flexible modes of deployable structures can be difficult to model prior to launch makes the controller-design problem even more difficult. The goal of this project is to develop control methodologies that exploit the large trade space in sensors, actuators, and control objective. Sensors can be limited to traditional attitude and angular-velocity sensors, or also include measurements of the flexible-body motion (i.e. strains or displacements). Actuators can be limited to applying a single torque to the spacecraft, or allow multiple actuators distributed across the deployable structure. Control objectives can be simply to avoid exciting the flexible-body motion, or to actively control these perturbations. Research projects may address one or more of these topics.
AFRL Scholars Program
Nonlinear dynamics in spacecraft guidance, navigation, and control (Internship)
This project seeks to develop improved methods for spacecraft guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) through improved understanding of the spacecraft nonlinear dynamics. Spacecraft translational motion is dominated by orbital dynamics, and the control is often constrained by a limited fuel supply. Therefore, translational GNC methods generally must be designed to work with these dynamics instead of fighting them. Spacecraft attitude motion is governed by the particular structure of rotational dynamics, and robust performance of attitude GNC methods depends on careful adherence to this structure. Additionally, spacecraft operations are subject to significant nonlinear control-estimation interactions, an example being the lack of observability of control-free relative motion in close proximity when using angles-only measurements. Research projects may address one or more of these topics.
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