Generalized Model for Solar Sails

摘要

The forces and moments acting on a solar sail of arbitrary shape and optical properties can be determined analytically by computing a series of coefficients. If the optical properties are constant, then the surface integrals J~1, J~2, J~3,L, K~2, and K~3 define the sail specific coefficients for forces and moments. With this formalism, force and moment computations for completely different sail models can be handled by using a generic set of analytic equations. These distributions are nominally constant in the sail-fixed frame, and thus cannot directly represent the effect of changing sail structure geometry. Future research will address this limitation.