Efficient explicit simulation for dynamics of spinning circular solar sails considering the orbit-attitude-vibration coupling effect

The spinning circular solar sail is highly attractive in space-exploring missions due to its low areal density and compact fold strategy. Its accurate modeling and real-time simulations can help effectively predict the dynamic behavior, thus assisting its on-orbit operation and control. This work achieves efficient explicit simulations for the dynamics of spinning circular solar sails considering the orbit-attitude-vibration coupling effect. To achieve this, a dynamical circular solar sail model optimized for explicit integrators is established, where the Föppl-von Kármán (FvK) plate theory, without considering high-frequency in-plane vibrations, is adopted to describe the nonlinear deformations. Particularly, both the out-of-plane deflection and in-plane stresses for geometric stiffness are modeled, and their nonlinear coupling is taken into account. To address the time-varying coupling effect among the orbit, attitude, and vibration, a non-inertial floating frame is introduced to separate their degrees of freedom, such that the multiscale challenge can be overcome. Furthermore, the local incremental rotation vector is then employed to get rid of singularities existing in large spatial rotations. Based on this, the explicit Lie group integrator is developed to efficiently solve the coupling dynamics of the solar sail. Numerical experiments are performed to verify the accuracy of the dynamic model and validate the high efficiency of the explicit simulations. This present work contributes to the explicit real-time simulation of spinning circular solar sails considering orbit-attitude-vibration coupling effects.