Heliogyro Solar Sail Structural Dynamics and Stability

Although heliogyro solar sails have existed in concept for several decades, and previous studies have investigated some aspects of their dynamics and control, a significant amount of research is still needed to characterize the response of the structure under the projected range of orbital conditions. In this paper, a discrete-mass approach is applied to the single gossamer sail and extended to the complete heliogyro structure with multiple spinning sails around a hub. This results in a fully coupled approximation of the heliogyro blade dynamics, which is used to predict the onset of flutter, and thus develop a better understanding of the system's stability regions. The study also appraises the validity of the discretizing method by comparing with results from past literature. The formulation investigated in this paper provides a straightforward procedure to obtain heliogyro equations of motion for varying degrees of fidelity.