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Sanmartín Losada, Juan Ramón and Lorenzini, Enrico C. (2006). Spherical collectors versus bare tethers for drag, thrust, and power generation. "IEEE Transactions on plasma science", v. 34 (n. 5); pp. 2133-2139. ISSN 0093-3813.
Title: | Spherical collectors versus bare tethers for drag, thrust, and power generation |
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Author/s: |
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Item Type: | Article |
Título de Revista/Publicación: | IEEE Transactions on plasma science |
Date: | 2006 |
ISSN: | 0093-3813 |
Volume: | 34 |
Subjects: | |
Faculty: | E.T.S.I. Aeronáuticos (UPM) |
Department: | Física Aplicada a la Ingeniería Aeronáutica [hasta 2014] |
Creative Commons Licenses: | Recognition - No derivative works - Non commercial |
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Deorbit, power generation, and thrusting performances of a bare thin-tape tether and an insulated tether with a spherical electron collector are compared for typical conditions in low-Earth orbit and common values of length L = 4−20 km and cross-sectional area of the tether A = 1−5 mm2. The relative performance of moderately large spheres, as compared with bare tapes, improves but still lags as one moves from deorbiting to power generation and to thrusting: Maximum drag in deorbiting requires maximum current and, thus, fully reflects on anodic collection capability, whereas extracting power at a load or using a supply to push current against the motional field requires reduced currents. The relative performance also improves as one moves to smaller A, which makes the sphere approach the limiting short-circuit current, and at greater L, with the higher bias only affecting moderately the already large bare-tape current. For a 4-m-diameter sphere, relative performances range from 0.09 sphere-to-bare tether drag ratio for L = 4 km and A = 5 mm2 to 0.82 thrust–efficiency ratio for L = 20 km and A = 1 mm2. Extremely large spheres collecting the short-circuit current at zero bias at daytime (diameters being about 14 m for A = 1 mm2 and 31 m for A = 5 mm2) barely outperform the bare tape for L = 4 km and are still outperformed by the bare tape for L = 20 km in both deorbiting and power generation; these large spheres perform like the bare tape in thrusting. In no case was sphere or sphere-related hardware taken into account in evaluating system mass, which would have reduced the sphere performances even further.
Item ID: | 21740 |
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DC Identifier: | https://oa.upm.es/21740/ |
OAI Identifier: | oai:oa.upm.es:21740 |
Deposited by: | Biblioteca ETSI Aeronauticos |
Deposited on: | 22 Nov 2013 10:56 |
Last Modified: | 20 Feb 2023 07:23 |