Hybrid Low Thrust Propulsion Trajectory Design and Optimization Using Virtual Gravity Method

采用虚拟引力场的太阳帆/电推进混合推力机动轨道设计

¹ School of Aerospace, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China
² Research & Development Institute of Northwestern Polytechnical University in Shenzhen, Shenzhen 518057, China
³ Shanghai Aerospace System Engineering Research Institute, Shanghai 201109, China
⁴ National Astronautical Observation, CAS Space Debris Observation and Application Center, CNSA 100012, China

Received: 12 May 2017

Abstract

a novel spacecraft trajectory design method using hybrid low thrust system is proposed in this paper. The hybrid system is constituted with a solar sail propulsion thruster and a solar electric propulsion thruster. In proposed method, the former one provides radical thrust and circumferential thrust to from a virtual gravity, while the later one provides a tangential thrust. In this way, the spacecraft is virtually motioned by constant tangential thrust in a virtual gravity field. Using proposed method, the thrusting trajectory can be parameterized, and a large number of feasible trajectories for circle to circle rendezvous problem can be obtained. To the end the steering law to minimize the fuel cost is found using Matlab optimization tools Fmicon function, and the result is compared with traditional pure solar electric propulsion method in terms of payload mass fraction. The simulation results show that the proposed method can reduced propellant consumption significantly compared with the pure SEP system.

摘要

针对连续小推力轨道设计问题，提出了一种采用虚拟引力场的太阳帆-电推进混合小推力轨道设计与优化方法。首先，给出了虚拟引力场的定义，以及太阳帆/电推进混合推力模型；然后建立了基于混合推进方法设计连续小推力机动轨道设计模型；并推导了该动力学模型的解析解；其次采用四阶龙格库塔数值方法分析了该解析解的精度，提出了误差因子参数的概念，采用误差因子参数约束来保证解析解精度。最后，以地球-火星转移轨道设计的算例，求解了采用太阳帆/电推进混合推进方式实现航天器轨道机动，并将其结果与单独电推力方法进行了对比。仿真结果表明，该方法能够大大减小燃料消耗以及轨道转移任务时间；与混合连续推力间接优化方法相比，该解析方法能够很大程度上减少计算时间。