Peloni Alessandro, Barbera Daniele, Laurenzi Susanna, Circi Christian
School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK.
Faculty of Engineering, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G1 1XW, UK.
ScientificWorldJournal. 2015;2015:714371. doi: 10.1155/2015/714371. Epub 2015 Jul 27.
Typical square solar-sail design is characterised by a central hub with four-quadrant sails, conferring to the spacecraft the classical X-configuration. One of the critical aspects related to this architecture is due to the large deformations of both membrane and booms, which leads to a reduction of the performance of the sailcraft in terms of thrust efficiency. As a consequence, stiffer sail architecture would be desirable, taking into account that the rigidity of the system strongly affects the orbital dynamics. In this paper, we propose a new solar-sail architecture, which is more rigid than the classical X-configuration. Among the main pros and cons that the proposed configuration presents, this paper aims to show the general concept, investigating the performances from the perspectives of both structural response and attitude control. Membrane deformations, structural offset, and sail vibration frequencies are determined through finite element method, adopting a variable pretensioning scheme. In order to evaluate the manoeuvring performances of this new solar-sail concept, a 35-degree manoeuvre is studied using a feedforward and feedback controller.
典型的方形太阳帆设计的特点是有一个带有四个象限帆的中心枢纽，赋予航天器经典的X形结构。与这种结构相关的一个关键问题是薄膜和吊杆都会发生较大变形，这导致帆式航天器在推力效率方面的性能下降。因此，考虑到系统的刚度会强烈影响轨道动力学，更坚固的帆结构是可取的。在本文中，我们提出了一种新的太阳帆结构，它比经典的X形结构更坚固。在提出的结构所呈现的主要优缺点中，本文旨在展示总体概念，从结构响应和姿态控制两个角度研究其性能。通过有限元方法，采用可变预紧方案来确定薄膜变形、结构偏移和帆的振动频率。为了评估这种新的太阳帆概念的操纵性能，使用前馈和反馈控制器研究了35度的操纵。
