Effect of marman clamp system on dynamic characteristics of spacecraft

Marman clamp system is usually used to fasten spacecraft and the launch vehicle, or different sections of spacecraft. In this paper, the axial stiffness of the marman clamp system was calculated by theoretical calculation. Then stiffness of marman clamp system was taken into account in the finite element method (FEM) model of spacecraft. Finally, modal analysis and frequency response analysis were carried out to validate the effects of marman clamp system on dynamic characteristics of spacecraft. The simulation results were compared with those results based on the FEM where the spacecraft was considered to be fixed to explore the effect of the marman clamp system on dynamic characteristics of spacecraft. The results showed that the fundamental frequency of satellite decreases when taking into account of marman clamp system, and the later fundamental frequencies at horizontal directions decrease more than the longitudinal direction. The acceleration responses of the satellite changed little when taking into accounting of the marman clamp system. The analysis method and results may extend to other spacecrafts with marman clamp system.