A high fidelity solar sail propulsion model is proposed to provide solar sail system designers with a tool to evaluate the impact of sail characteristics such as; load induced wrinkling, packaging wrinkles, thermal distortions, sail billow and other anomalies, on sail propulsion efficiency and trim stability. The tool will use results from exiting high fidelity finite element models to establish surface topology for a sail in an operational environment. Software will be developed to perform an element level evaluation of the reflected, absorbed, and emitted photon momentum transfer to the sail. The elemental forces that are calculated will be vectorially summed to perform a high resolution calculation of sail thrust vector magnitude, orientation, center of pressure and vehicle torques. A high fidelity model of this type is needed for Guidance, Navigation, and Control system design and other propulsion system sub-elements that are being developed for sails. The results will also support sail design optimization studies.
Potential NASA Commercial Applications: NASA has made substantial investments in developing structural models of solar sail systems of various types. However, there is currently no convenient method for coupling the results of these models to the propulsion efficiency of the solar sail system. The proposed tool fills this niche. Thus, it is anticipated that there will be a large demand for this product both internally at NASA and from the various sail design teams that are currently developing solar sail system designs.
