随着空间引力波探测等无拖曳控制任务需求增加,对微推力器的高精度、低噪声推力测量需求日益增长。微重力耦合一直是造成地面微推力测量误差的重要因素。本文针对微推力器推力的地面精准测量问题,提出了一种级联摆式微小推力测量系统。建立了基于共轴传动的双扭摆系统的耦合模型,分析了质心偏移、基准倾斜对测量精度的影响,用以解耦除推力以外的重力噪声。通过Simscape Multibody软件进行多体仿真,设计并实施了级联摆实验,研究了级联摆在不同工况下的动态响应,验证了所提方法的有效性。结果表明,级联摆系统能够在~1mHz低频振动环境下解耦重力形成的微扰,实现1μN量级的精准推力测量,为空间引力波探测项目中的微推力器性能评估提供了一种有效的技术手段。
As the demand for drag-free control missions, such as space-based gravitational wave detection, grows, so does the need for high-precision, low-noise micro-thrust measurements. A significant challenge in ground-based micro-thrust measurements is the error caused by coupling with microgravity. To overcome this, we propose a cascaded torsion pendulum system for accurate ground-based micro-thrust measurements. A dual torsion pendulum model with coaxial transmission was developed to analyse the effect of centre of mass offset and baseline tilt on measurement accuracy, facilitating the decoupling of gravitational noise from thrust measurements. Multi-body simulations were performed using Simscape, followed by cascaded pendulum experiments to investigate the dynamic response of the system under different conditions. The experiments confirmed the effectiveness of the method in minimising noise. The results demonstrate that the cascaded pendulum system can successfully decouple gravity-induced disturbances in a low-frequency vibration environment (∼1 mHz), enabling accurate thrust measurements at the micro-Newton level. This approach provides a reliable method for evaluating the performance of micro-thrusters in space-based gravitational wave detection missions.
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