Feedback control law of solar sail with variable surface reflectivity at Sun-Earth collinear equilibrium points

Niccolai, Lorenzo; Mengali, Giovanni; Quarta, Alessandro A.; Caruso, Andrea

doi:10.1016/j.ast.2020.106144

Cited by 33 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Assuming a higher-performance sail, with a lightness number of 0.02, (corresponding to the design value of the Solar Orbiter mission with a near-term technology level), the warning time increases to about 80 minutes for an average solar wind speed and about 40 minutes for fast streams. Since L 1 -type AEPs are known to be intrinsically unstable [33,42], as is confirmed by the linear stability analysis reported in the remainder of this section, their maintenance requires a suitable control system to be used.…”

Section: Mathematical Preliminaries and Mission Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 77%

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Collinear artificial equilibrium point maintenance with a wrinkled solar sail

Bianchi

Niccolai

Mengali

et al. 2021

Aerospace Science and Technology

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Section: Mathematical Preliminaries and Mission Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 77%

“…The problem of generation and stabilization of an L 1 -type AEP by means of a propellantless propulsive system has been discussed by several authors [33,39,40,41,42]. The main contribution of this paper may be summarized in the following points.…”

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confidence: 99%

Collinear artificial equilibrium point maintenance with a wrinkled solar sail

Bianchi

Niccolai

Mengali

et al. 2021

Aerospace Science and Technology

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“…In terms of attitude control, although there exists a variety of conventional attitude control methods such as reaction wheels, control moment gyroscopes (CMGs) and thrusters, these methods cannot effectively control the attitude of solar sails due to the mass limitation and the required long mission lifetime [1,3,11]. Currently, several methods for attitude control for solar sails exist [17], including the control vane method [18], gimbaled masses method [19,20], sliding masses method, shifted wings method, tilted wings method and billowed wings method for rigid solar sail and sail film with controllable reflectivity method for non-rigid solar sail [3,[21][22][23]. Qu et al also proposed a control method utilizing individually controllable elements to control each sail [24].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and Simulation of a Flexible Bending Actuator for Solar Sail Attitude Control

et al. 2021

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This paper presents the design of a flexible bending actuator using shape memory alloy (SMA) and its integration in attitude control for solar sailing. The SMA actuator has advantages in its power-to-weight ratio and light weight. The bending mechanism and models of the actuator were designed and developed. A neural network based adaptive controller was implemented to control the non-linear nature of the SMA actuator. The actuator control modules were integrated into the solar sail attitude model with a quaternion PD controller that formed a cascade control. The feasibility and performance of the proposed actuator for attitude control were investigated and evaluated, showing that the actuator could generate 1.5 × 10−3 Nm torque which maneuvered a 1600 m2 CubeSat based solar sail by 45° in 14 h. The results demonstrate that the proposed SMA bending actuator can be effectively integrated in attitude control for solar sailing under moderate external disturbances using an appropriate controller design, indicating the potential of a lighter solar sail for future missions.

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“…The use of propellantless propulsion systems in the interplanetary space, such as photonic solar sails [1,2,3,4,5], Electric Solar Wind Sails (E-sails) [6,7,8,9,10], or magnetic sails (MagSails) [11,12,13], is a fascinating option in view of the opportunity they offer to obtain long-lasting missions. A common peculiarity of these propulsion systems is in the dependence of the thrust magnitude on the distance from the Sun.…”

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confidence: 99%