Abstract
The present study aims at improving a solar sail quadrant design concerning three objective quantities: mass, fundamental frequency, and wrinkled sail area. For the analysis, a parametric finite-element sail model is constructed, which is described by a set of seven design variables. In addition, the support boom is modeled using an analytical beam theory including a manufacturing imperfection. A design optimization strategy is applied to the sail/boom integrated model, which exhibits the improvement of all three design objectives. Furthermore, this paper explores a slightly conical-shaped sailcraft design that passively stabilizes its attitude dynamics in deep space. Finite-element analyses in this study demonstrate that the attitude dynamics of square sailcraft can be unstable due to the sail billowing caused by solar radiation pressure. It is shown that this attitude instability can be avoided by placing the four quadrants such that the sailcraft has a slightly conical shape. This study identifies the required cone geometry for the passive-attitude stabilization.
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