Abstract Charged spacecraft experience electrostatic forces and torques from both charged neighboring spacecraft and the local space environment. These forces and torques can be used for a variety of novel touchless actuation concepts. In contrast to the multipole method which provides an expansion of the potential field, this paper presents a direct binomial series expansion of the forces and torques called the Appropriate Fidelity Measures (AFMs) method. A two-stage process is presented where first the force and torque vectors are expanded assuming a known charge distribution, followed by a second stage which provides an approximation of the charge distribution through the susceptibilities of the measures. AFMs provide a direct analytical solution and thus provide new insight for charged single- and two-body configurations. The accuracy of a truncated expansion is numerically studied and validated. With a second-order AFM solution, the errors drop below 5% at separations greater than 6 craft diameters. This new method is well-suited for control analysis due to the analytical solutions produced. An AFM solution of the torque on an axis-symmetric cylinder is developed that yields closed form analytic solutions that match prior numerically fit solutions.


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    Title :

    Spacecraft Electrostatic Force and Torque Expansions Yielding Appropriate Fidelity Measures


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2019-03-15


    Size :

    22 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English







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