Numerical study of differential torque-producing jets in a floated-ball inertial platform

Abstract

This paper presents a numerical study of the flow field caused by torque-producing jets in a floated-ball inertial guiding system. The basic flow element studied is the flow in a triangular region of octant sphere surface confined by the two sphere surfaces and the three attitude-driver bands normal to each other. The results show the flow patterns of torque-producing jets and the relations between the effective driving torques and the flow rates under several typical working conditions. The working performances of two kinds of differential torque-producing jets are analyzed and compared. The second kind of differential torque-producing jets, which is first proposed in this paper, has the prominent merit, i.e., the regulation of the three components of driving torque can be realized by non-interference adjustment, so that the three components of angular displacement can be controlled independently.