Flexibility influence on passive stability of a spinning solar sail

The attitude passive stability design during inclination cranking is developed using a rigid solar sail model. The criterion shows that the solar sail can be stabilized by designing the structure parameters and the spin rate. An oscillation–attitude–orbit dynamical model by hybrid method is employed to quantify the flexibility effect on the passive station keeping. The simulation results indicate that the oscillation has an obvious impact on the attitude and orbit. The oscillation effect is reduced as the spin rate increases, which means a larger spin rate is required to stable the attitude for a flexible solar sail than the rigid one. For some certain spin rates, the passive stability criterion obtained from the rigid model may become invalid. The comparative simulations are implemented to explain this phenomenon by noting the fact that the flexible structural parameter and the solar radiation pressure torque due to sail vibration are different from the rigid one.