Volume magnetization for system-level testing of magnetic materials within small satellites

Passive Magnetic Attitude Control (PMAC) is a popular among small satellites due to its low resource cost and simplicity of installation. However, predicting the performance of these systems can be a challenge, chiefly due to the difficulty of measurement and simulation of hysteresis materials. We present a low-cost method of magnetic measurement allowing for characterization of both hard and soft magnetic materials. A Helmholtz cage uniformly magnetizes a 30 cm×30 cm×30 cm test volume. The addition of a thin sense coil allows this system to characterize individual hysteresis rod performance when in close proximity to other hard and/or soft magnetic materials. This test setup is applied to hard and soft magnetic materials used aboard the Colorado Student Space Weather Experiment (CSSWE), a 3U CubeSat for space weather investigation which used a PMAC system. The measured hard magnet dipole of 0.80±0.017 A m2 is in good agreement with the dynamics-based satellite dipole moment fits. Five hysteresis rods from the same set as the CSSWE flight rods are tested; significant differences in dampening abilities are found. In addition, a limitation of the widely-used Flatley model is described. The interaction of two hysteresis rods in a variety of relative geometries are tested; perpendicular rods are found to have no significant interaction while parallel rods could have their dampening ability reduced by half, depending on the rod separation distance. Finally, the performance of the hysteresis rods are measured in their flight configuration, with hard and soft magnetic material dispersed as it is on CSSWE itself. For the CSSWE PMAC system design, interactions between rods have a greater affect than the magnetic flux density offset due to the onboard bar magnet.