Solar sail appears to be promising and effective spacecraft in interplanetary missions; however, performance degradation is inevitable during its long-term voyage, caused by materials wastage and accidents. This study designed a solar sail with numerous discrete elements (SSNDE) and an intelligent attitude control strategy (IACS) to prevent performance degradation and decrease its harmful effect. Structural analysis of SSNDE revealed improvement in reduction of system errors caused by irregular blade deformation and mechanical abrasion via employing numerous discrete elements with rigid boundaries. Furthermore, IACS enables SSNDE to maintain control ability despite the invalidation of a quarter of blades, which can be verified by simulation results. The SSNDE design and its IACS endow an effective solution to decrease performance degradation against material wastage and unpredictable accidents in interplanetary missions. Moreover, they reveal the potential of intelligent strategy in the future aerospace industry.

中文翻译：

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多离散元太阳帆概念设计与智能控制

太阳帆似乎是行星际任务中很有前途和有效的航天器；然而，由于材料浪费和事故，在长期航行中，性能下降是不可避免的。这项研究设计了一个具有许多离散元素 (SSNDE) 和智能姿态控制策略 (IACS) 的太阳帆，以防止性能下降并减少其有害影响。SSNDE 的结构分析表明，通过采用大量具有刚性边界的离散元件，可以减少由不规则叶片变形和机械磨损引起的系统误差。此外，IACS 使 SSNDE 能够在四分之一叶片失效的情况下保持控制能力，这可以通过仿真结果进行验证。SSNDE 设计及其 IACS 提供了一种有效的解决方案，以减少因材料浪费和行星际任务中不可预测的事故而导致的性能下降。此外，它们揭示了未来航空航天工业中智能战略的潜力。