Aerodynamic disturbance force and torque for spacecraft and simple shapes using finite plate elements — Part II: Aerodynamic force & torque

This paper describes a method for determining the aerodynamic force and torque upon spacecraft in orbits significantly affected by aerodynamic forces. A spacecraft configuration and mission orbit is required for this method to be useful. An aerodynamic force is determined that is useful for both attitude control disturbance torque and orbital mechanics perturbation force modeling. By using finite plate elements, used to approximate the shape of spacecraft in three dimensions, complex shapes can be readily modeled for high-accuracy computations. The net force created on the shape at any attitude can be readily computed along with the disturbance torque if the mass properties of the shape are also known. This model is validated using experimental data for hypersonic molecular beams and Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) methods. Examples of spacecraft aerodynamic torque mapping in three dimensions are included for both simple shapes and a hypothesized spacecraft. It is the goal of this paper to show examples of how the magnitude of satellite aerodynamic force and torque can be determined using a finite plate element model and to demonstrate some results using simple shapes.