Recalculation of view factors and orbital heating
The routines mentioned in this section allow the view factors between elements of a model and the orbital fluxes to be recalculated during a temperature solve. These recalculations can be in response to changes in the model geometry or from changes to sun and planet that are not known before the temperature solution. Applications would include:
- Solving models in real time with external inputs of orbital data and spacecraft configuration.
- Temperature dependent spacecraft orientation. The exterior temperatures of the spacecraft are monitored and the spacecraft reoriented in response to these temperatures.
Simple rigid body motion
All element motion is assumed to be rigid body motion, meaning that there is no change in shape of elements. Therefore, the motion can be defined by referencing elements. Simple rigid body motion limits the motion to rotation along an axis or translation along a straight line.
To take into account the simple rigid body motion, use SRBM_DEF and SRBM_MOVE subroutines. They generally fall into one of 3 categories:
- Definition
- Implementation
- Recalculation
Definition occurs once during the solve, implementation and recalculation occur whenever a significant motion/attitude change has occurred. There may be multiple calls to implementation routines but only one recalculation is required once all changes have been implemented.
Change model attitude
To change the spacecraft model attitude, you can use the following subroutines:
- CMA_DEF
- CMA_Orient
- Set_Orbital_Fluxes
- ProcessMotion