Dynamic analysis of rigid-flexible coupling spacecraft based on Euler parameters

With the development of aerospace technology, rigid-flexible coupling spacecraft with strong nonlinearity dominates, bringing huge challenges for numerical tools. This paper aims to accurately and quickly analyze the dynamic behavior of rigid-flexible coupling spacecraft. In our work, rigid body and flexible body are both described by Euler parameters for avoiding singular angles. Then, for this type of strong nonlinear dynamic system, the BN-stable method that is unconditionally stable for nonlinear initial value problems proposed by the first author is introduced to solve the transient responses. To keep the accuracy of the numerical rotation matrix, the relation between the angular velocity and Euler parameters, and the constraint in the level of velocity, are introduced to reformulate the original BN-stable method. Through the dynamic analysis for rigid satellite bodies and flexible solar wings, we find that the proposed strategy can effectively simulate the dynamic responses of spacecraft, and compared to the currently popular strategy, our strategy enjoys considerable advantages in accuracy, stability, and dissipation.