Spring Tuning for Spacecraft Separation Dynamics Using Genetic Algorithm

The separation of spacecraft from the spent stage is a mission-critical event. While injecting the spacecraft in the required orbit, the separation mechanism has to provide the required velocity w.r.t the spent stage while imparting a minimum body rate to the spacecraft. Due to the inherent center of gravity (CG) offset of the spacecraft, ensuring near-zero rate to the spacecraft during separation can only be achieved by selecting suitable locations and energy levels for the springs. This is referred to as spring tuning studies. The general practice followed for the spring tuning studies is that based on the lateral CG location (i.e., the quadrant in which CG lies); the spring locations and energy levels are selected appropriately. This approach is manual and needs a lot of effort and time in arriving at a suitable spring combination. Also, this does not necessarily ensure the best combination of springs. In the present work, the spring tuning is carried out using an optimization routine based on genetic algorithm. Improvement and increased robustness in the results are observed compared to the earlier method.