Analytical Study of Periodic Solutions on Perturbed Equatorial Two-Body Problem

Abstract

This paper presents analytical derivations to study periodic solutions for the two-body problem perturbed by the first zonal harmonic parameter. In particular, three different semianalytical approaches to solve this problem have been studied: (1) the classic perturbation theory, (2) the Lindstedt–Poincaré technique, and (3) the Krylov–Bogoliubov–Mitropolsky method. In addition, the numerical integration by Runge–Kutta algorithm is established. However, the numerical comparison tests show that by increasing the value of angular momentum the solutions provided by Lindstedt–Poincaré and Krylov–Bogoliubov–Mitropolsky methods become similar, and they provide almost identical results using a smaller value for the perturbed parameter which quantify the dynamical flattening of the main body, the Krylov–Bogoliubov–Mitropolsky provides more accurate results to design elliptical periodic solutions than Lindstedt–Poincaré technique when the perturbed parameter has a relatively large value, regardless of the value of angular momentum. This study can be applied to equatorial orbits to obtain closed-form analytical solutions.