Finite-time fault-tolerant consensus control for multiple solar sail formation flying around heliocentric inclined elliptic displaced orbits

This paper studies solar sail heliocentric inclined elliptic displaced orbits (HIEDOs) with the application of reflectivity control devices (RCDs). In the solar sail HIEDO, the angle between the line from the Sun to the focus and the elliptic orbital plane is variable. A novel method is given to solve the sail attitude angles and the state of RCDs to achieve HIEDOs. Furthermore, this paper analyzes the problem of multiple solar sail formation flying (MSSFF) around HIEDOs, which consists of a chief and multiple deputies. The chief moves in an HIEDO and does not need to obtain the information from the deputies. The deputies need to receive the information from the chief, and an undirected connected graph is adopted to represent the information exchange structure between the deputies. Considering the convergence speed and reliability of the solar sail formation system, an innovative finite-time fault-tolerant distributed coordinated control scheme is devised. Under this control scheme, the deputies can consistently converge to the expected solar sail formation configuration within a finite time, even in the presence of the actuator effectiveness faults within a certain range. Finally, an example is used to verify the validity of the designed control scheme.