Thermal-structural analysis for flexible spacecraft with single or double solar panels: A comparison study

Abstract

The thermal-structural analysis for a flexible spacecraft with double solar panels is carried out in this paper through a comparison study with spacecraft having a single panel. The solar panels are composed of honeycomb panel and subjected to time-varying thermal loading. Taking into account the coupling effect among attitude motion, structural deformation and thermal loading, the rigid-flexible-thermal coupling dynamic model of the spacecraft is established by using the Hamiltonian Principle. Based on the finite difference method, an explicit algorithm is developed to solve the transient heat conduction problem of the solar panel. The coupled thermal-structural analysis reveals significant differences between the dynamic characteristics of thermally induced vibration of spacecraft with single and double solar panels. The thermally induced dynamic response significantly affects the attitude of spacecraft with a single solar panel, while it hardly affects the attitude of spacecraft with double solar panels. As the maneuver attitude or the initial incident angle of heat flux increase, the thermally induced vibration of spacecraft with a single solar panel changes from stable to unstable and thermal flutter occurs, while that of spacecraft with double solar panels always keeps stable.