A simplified computational method for two-body high spinning rate vehicles

Abstract

Simulation of aerospace high spinning rate vehicles is an enormous challenge for model engineers. It requires the use of a big amount of computational resources to integrate the main body rotation dynamics together with the rest of the spinning bodies and the translational movement. Note that there is a need for reducing the time step to at least the period of rotation bodies to reliably capture dynamics. However, the utility of rotational attitude for two or more body aircraft is usually low for the development of control laws and its estimation may burden the process. This paper presents a novel approach which simplifies the modeling of axisymmetric high spinning rate aerospace vehicles where the preferential rotation direction matches the symmetry axis, such as ballistic rockets and dual-spin stabilized satellites. This approach, which allows the use of reduced computational resources for development purposes, may also foster the possibility of processing and estimating trajectories on board using low-cost devices. Two simulation models are developed in Matlab-Simulink in order to test and validate the proposed methodology. The first one is based on traditional models for spinning bodies while the second one features the proposed approach. A set of non-linear six degrees of freedom simulations has been performed for the two models. The comparison of the obtained results show the out-performance of the proposed approach.