Electromagnetic Interaction Between a Slowly Rotating Conducting Shell and Magnetic Dipoles: A Theoretical and Numerical Study

The non-contact electromagnetic detumbling technologies for space debris and defunct satellites attract a lot of interest from many researchers, in which service satellites use one or two electromagnetic devices onboard to generate a controllable torque to reduce the rotation of the target so that the robotic arm can capture the target without hazardous collisions. However, there are many challenges in modeling the interactions between electromagnetic devices and the target. In this study, the electromagnetic devices and the target are simplified as magnetic dipoles and a slowly rotating conducting shell with typical shape, respectively. The interactions of one and two magnetic dipoles with a slowly rotating conducting spherical shell are derived. Then, the interaction between a slowly rotating conducting non-spherical geometry (a cube or a cylinder) and two magnetic dipoles is calculated numerically. The numerical results show that non-spherical geometries can be regarded as spherical shells in terms of calculating the electromagnetic interactions when the magnetic dipoles are far away from the geometries.