GENERATION OF SIMPLIFIED SPACECRAFT MATHEMATICAL-MODELS WITH EQUIVALENT DYNAMIC CHARACTERISTICS

Equivalent spacecraft dynamic systems consisting of a number of single-degree-of-freedom models are described in the literature for one- and two-dimensional spacecraft dynamic models. In this paper a methodology is presented to generate simplified three-dimensional spacecraft dynamic models of complex spacecraft. The proposed methodology was employed for a preliminary coupled analysis of the CLUSTER spacecraft stack configuration. The simplified dynamic model produces equivalent dynamic response in terms of launcher spacecraft interface transient dynamic loads. The quality of the simplified dynamic representation is considered particularly useful for updating spacecraft design loads defined in launcher user manuals.