On libration suppression of partial space elevator with a moving climber

This paper develops a high-fidelity and high-accuracy dynamic model to investigate libration suppression of partial space elevator caused by a moving climber through tether deployment and/or retrieval at main and subsatellites. The model is based on the nodal position finite element method in the arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian description. In this approach, moving nodes are assigned to the climber and satellites and variable-length elements are used to represent the movement of climber and tether deployment and/or retrieval. In conjunction with the moving nodes, a merging and dividing element scheme is derived to describe the climber moving across the boundary of tether elements. The results show that the deployment of tether at the subsatellites produce a positive effect to suppress the libration motion of partial space elevator, while the retrieval of tether produce a negative effect.