Estimation of Free Space Capacitance and Body Potential of a Spacecraft for Charging Analysis

This paper presents a computation of the absolute free space capacitance and electrostatic body potential of a spacecraft using moment method with triangular patch modeling. Expressions are derived numerically and the moment integral is evaluated. The capacitance of a square plate is computed to val...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on plasma science 2013-12, Vol.41 (12), p.3487-3491
Main Authors: Karthikeyan, Balsami, Hariharan, V. K., Sanyal, Subrata
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Capacitance
Computational modeling
Electric potential
Electrostatic discharge
Electrostatic discharges
magnetospheric plasma
Plasmas
Satellites
simulation software
Space vehicles
spacecraft charging
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Summary:This paper presents a computation of the absolute free space capacitance and electrostatic body potential of a spacecraft using moment method with triangular patch modeling. Expressions are derived numerically and the moment integral is evaluated. The capacitance of a square plate is computed to validate the approach. Finally, the free space capacitance of a typical spacecraft is computed for various configurations and body potential is evaluated. The derived expressions are simple and suitable for developing the charging analysis tool. As this approach is more general, it can be easily applied to any practical spacecraft configuration.
ISSN:0093-3813
1939-9375
DOI:10.1109/TPS.2013.2271280