Thermal-structural analysis of a square solar sail

The aim of this work is to improve an efficient methodology, recently developed to study the structural response of a classical square solar sails in free flight, under the action of the solar radiation pressure. The new approach models the effect of thermal loads acting on the sail's reflective surface. In particular, a square solar sail with a side length of 20 m at 1 au distance from the Sun is analyzed for different values of incidence and clock angles. The thermal-structural analyses are carried out under the assumption that the stress-displacement solution depends on the temperature field, but there is no inverse dependency. The thermal loads, for some attitude conditions, are shown to have remarkable effects on the sail deformation.