旋转电动帆推进性能指标分析

电动太阳风帆(简称电动帆,E-sail)是一种新兴的利用太阳风动能产生冲力,实现无工质消耗的空间推进技术.本文考虑由两颗微小卫星通过导线连接构成的电动帆系统,关注传统电动帆推力模型研究中忽略的电动帆姿态对推力的影响,采用旋转电动帆"哑铃"模型假设进行动力学建模.最后,针对日心非开普勒轨道环境开展算例仿真,计入太阳风库仑力摄动的影响,分析电动帆的推进性能指标.仿真结果表明,电动帆推进效率主要由导线长度、导线电势、卫星质量和相对于飞行方向的俯仰角决定.

Analysis of rotating electric solar sail for spacecraft propulsion

The electric solar sail (E sail) is a new propulsion concept which can extract momentum from the solar wind almost without comsuming any propellant. The dynamic characterisitcs of a E sail system composed of two microsatellites connected each other by tethers were investigated. The E sail system was modelled by adopting the dumbbell model assumption accounting for the attitude of electric solar sail, which was neglected in traditional models. Numercial simulations based on heliocentric non kepler orbits were carried out to evaluate the propulsion performance under the coulomb force from the solar wind. The simulation results indicated that the propulsive efficiency of the E sail was largely influenced by the lengths and voltages of the tethers, the masses of the satellites and the pitch angle with respect to the flight direction.