Similitude investigation for ground experiment of spacecraft

The similitude problem for ground experiment of spacecraft was investigated. Dimensional analysis was revisited and employed to develop the necessary similarity conditions, and the constraints on the application of these similarity conditions were also discussed. The activity analyses of the states were proposed based on bond graph, furthermore, a continuous metric that could quantify the proximity of a given model to exact similitude was developed. The viability of this metric was demonstrated using two case studies, one focusing on two-body motion simulation and the other focusing on relative orbit motion simulation. Numerical simulation results prove that the method can be used to quantify the degree to which the model is close to satisfying the exact similitude quickly and effectively at engineering analyses.