Satellite thruster configuration design based on propellant consumption optimization

Considering the influence of installation angles of thrusters on the efficiency of north-south/east-west station keeping and attitude control, which determine the mass of required propellant, a modeling and calculational method is proposed for the coupled process of propellant consumption, and an optimization model is built for installation angles of small thrusters. In the proposed method, a fixed-point iterative method is used to decouple the coupled process between the required propellant at transfer orbit/geostationary orbit and the size of tank, and estimation models are built for the propellant consumption at different phases. Aiming to minimize the required propellant mass, a thruster configuration optimization model is built. Through a case for the practical thruster configuration design, Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Sequential Radial Basis Function (SRBF) surrogate model are applied respectively to deal with the optimization problem. The results demonstrate that SRBF effectively decreases the required propellant mass compared with the experience design, and distinctly improves the optimization efficiency compared with GA.