Abstract A torus-shaped sail consists of a reflective membrane attached to an inflatable torus-shaped rim. The sail’s deployment from its stowed configuration is initiated by introducing inflation pressure into the toroidal rim with an attached circular flat membrane coated by heat-sensitive materials that undergo thermal desorption (TD) from a solid to a gas phase. Our study of the deployment and acceleration of the sail is split into three steps: at a particular heliocentric distance a torus-shaped sail is deployed by a gas inflated into the toroidal rim and the membrane is kept flat by the pressure of the gas; under heating by solar radiation, the membrane coat undergoes TD and the sail is accelerated via TD of coating and solar radiation pressure (SRP); when TD ends, the sail utilizes thrust only from SRP. We study the stability of the torus-shaped sail and deflection and vibration of the flat membrane due to the acceleration by TD and SRP.
A torus-shaped solar sail accelerated via thermal desorption of coating
Advances in Space Research ; 67 , 9 ; 2577-2588
2020-06-30
12 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Space exploration with a solar sail coated by materials that undergo thermal desorption
Online Contents | 2015
|Thermal control of a solar sail
AIAA | 1978
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