Research on Occlusion of Satellite Solar Array based on Collision Detection Method

Protrusions on the satellite surface, especially the antennas might occlude the solar array when the satellite deploying in-orbit. This paper presents a line segment intersection method based on collision detection to simulate and calculate the solar array occlusion. First, the rectangular battery cells of solar array are divided to triangle meshes, and the subdivision degree of the meshes can be improved by linear interpolation. Then, a 3D graph scene is built to simulate the satellite deploying in-orbit. The line segments from the sun point to the entire triangle meshes’ center are created, and the intersection between the line segment and satellites’ other parts are tested during the real-time rendering process of the scene by the line segment intersection method. Then the occlusion rate can be calculated by the quantity of intersections, and the calculation precision can be improved by increasing the interpolations times. Meanwhile, the occluded triangles of the solar array are rendered to generate the shadow effect to improve the sense of reality. Finally, the method is verified by an example, and the result shows that it has a good precision and a good sense of reality.