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Updated: May 3, 2026

Optimization, Test and Diagnostics of Miniaturized Hall Thrusters
Published on: February 16, 2019
Efficiency of hysteresis rods in small spacecraft attitude stabilization
Assal Farrahi1, Ángel Sanz-Andrés1
1Instituto Universitario de Microgravedad "Ignacio Da Riva" (IDR), ETSI Aeronauticos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Plaza del Cardenal Cisneros 3, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
Abstract:
A semiempirical method for predicting the damping efficiency of hysteresis rods on-board small satellites is presented. It is based on the evaluation of dissipating energy variation of different ferromagnetic materials for two different rod shapes: thin film and circular cross-section rods, as a function of their elongation. Based on this formulation, an optimum design considering the size of hysteresis rods, their cross section shape, and layout has been proposed. Finally, the formulation developed was applied to the case of four existing small satellites, whose corresponding in-flight data are published. A good agreement between the estimated rotational speed decay time and the in-flight data has been observed.
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