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Orbital dynamics for rigid bodies

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Abstract

In this paper I describe a method for calculating the motions of a collection of self-gravitating rigid bodies. The bodies are described by polyhedra of general shapes with triangular faces. The gravitational potential of such objects can be calculated via the ‘polyhedron gravity’ routines of Werner (1994) and Werner and Scheeres (1996), and the resulting mutual forces and torques calculated via surface integration. Additional components of the overall scheme include updating the spin vector and orientation of the bodies, and their positions, velocities, and angular momenta after each timestep. Collisions are allowed, and treated via the impulse approximation. Inelastic or frictional collisions can be handled via coefficients of restitution. After the description of the scheme, I present some results that verify global conservation of momentum and energy during sample calculations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CODEP/IGPP Dept. Earth Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, USA

    D.G. Korycansky

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  1. D.G. Korycansky
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Korycansky, D. Orbital dynamics for rigid bodies. Astrophysics and Space Science 291, 57–74 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:ASTR.0000029954.42344.cf

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:ASTR.0000029954.42344.cf

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