Investigation of Liquid Sloshing in Spin-Stabilized Satellites.
Abstract
Several spin-stabilized communication satellites with liquid stores on board have exhibited unstable nutational motion. Liquid sloshing is suspected as the cause of this undesirable behavior. During an initial three year grant period, a test rig was built and instrumented, a rigid body computer model was developed using a pendulum analogy to simulate the sloshing liquid, and computational fluid dynamic (CFD) methods were used to develop a primitive variable numerical algorithm to describe two and three dimensional liquid sloshing. During the current three year grant period, the test rig and rigid body computer model have been used to study the effect of various physical parameter values on the motion, and stability conditions have been determined. The structural mathematical model has been improved by introduction of finite element techniques to account for elastic deformation of the test rig, and an implicit-explicit numerical approach has been implemented to solve the coupled, nonlinear equations of motion.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 31, 1993
- Accession Number
- ADA261671
Entities
People
- Donald R. Flugrad
- Joseph R. Baumgarten
- Richard H. Pletcher
Organizations
- Iowa State University