Solar sail deployment dynamics Articles uri icon

publication date

  • May 2021

start page

  • 2746

end page

  • 2756

issue

  • 9

volume

  • 67

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0273-1177

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1879-1948

abstract

  • The deployment dynamics of a solar sail consisting of four flexible booms and four membrane quadrants are studied. First, previous work on modelling only one membrane quadrant attached to two axially moving beams using time-varying quasi-modal expansion is extended to be applicable to the complete four-quadrant system. This is achieved via 'lifting” the quadrant-level matrices into system-level forms by mapping the former"s constituent blocks to the correct partitions in the latter. After the quadrant-to-system conversion of the matrices, the equations of motion from the authors" previous work readily apply to the complete system. Modal analysis is performed on a constant-length sail to validate the model"s basic foundations against the results obtained by finite element methods in the past literature. Deployment simulation results are presented, numerical parameter studies that show possibility of instability are performed using the system"s eigenvalues, and the stability results are discussed.

subjects

  • Astronomy
  • Physics

keywords

  • solar sails; beam-membrane vibrations; axially translating continua; deployment dynamics and stability