Reaction wheels are used to control the attitude of a satellite in space in an almost static manner. Excitation forces at high frequencies as well, however, due to unbalance or bearing faults, can be transmitted to the satellite structure and work badly against missions of the satellite. Hence, counteractions such as vibration isolators are often employed in practice.
In this paper, procedures are presented to design and test rubber vibration isolators based on characteristics of the transmission forces without isolators obtained from a previous study. First, a system consisting of reaction wheel, bearing, rigid cover and isolators was modeled with 11 degrees of freedom. Second, stiffness and damping of the isolators were designed such that the forces transmitted onto the satellite structure might satisfy given criteria. Finally, an actual isolation system fabricated using a rubber was tested to check the transmission forces.