Abstract: Spacecrafts with high accuracy and stabilization are required to reduce the disturbing forces produced by flywheels during the operation as low as possible, so the microvibrations need to be reduced effectively in the transmission path from flywheels themselves to the installation surfaces on the spacecraft. In general, passive vibration isolation approaches are commonly applied in mechanical flywheels while active vibration control approaches are used in magnetically suspended flywheels. In this paper, the microvibration characteristics of mechanical flywheels and magnetically suspended flywheels are introduced separately, and microvibration sources are analyzed. Moreover, the principle of passive vibration isolation and active vibration control are presented. The effects of vibration control based on the recent tests are illustrated.

Key words: flywheel, microvibration, passive vibration isolation, active vibration control