Abstract：Thermally induced vibrations of flexible structures of spacecraft appendages are a typical one of the spacecraft failure causes. The flexible structures are usually subjected to the thermal shock from solar flux due to night-day transition in the orbit. Therefore during the satellite design, it is a basis for making an accurate prediction of responses and stability of thermally induced dynamics. A new analysis model for thermally induced vibrations of a spacecraft structure composed of a rigid cabin and a flexible thin-walled tube was proposed. In this model, the effect of rigid-flexible coupling, the coupled thermoelastic effect, and the coupled thermal-structural effect were considered simultaneously. The rigid-flexible coupling includes the attitude angle of cabin, the rotation of tip mass, and the rigid motion and elastic deformation of thin-walled tube. The coupled thermo-elasticity that assumes the strain rate coupling term exists in the heat conduction equation due to the fact that the work done by external forces should be included in the energy conservation equation. The coupled thermal-structural analysis model that takes into account of the effects of rigid rotation and elastic deformation on the absorbed solar flux by the outside surface of thin-walled tube. First, the heat conduction equation with the above three coupling effects were given by applying the principle of conservation of energy and based on thermo-elasticity theory. The governing equations of motion with thermal effect were derived by using the Lagrange equation and the assumptions of small rigid body motion and small elastic deformation. Then, these equations were solved analytically by means of the approximating temperature and displacement fields, and the equation of stability boundary was obtained by the Routh-Hurwitz criterion. The results of numerical examples indicate that the analysis model presented in this article can give more accurate predictions for dynamical responses and stability criterion of thermally induced vibrations of spacecraft structures.
2021, Vol. 42 
