(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-12-12)
Amin, John
Over the next few years Georgia Tech’s Space System Design Lab (SSDL) will design and develop several
1U CubeSat missions starting with GT-1. These missions will include an Attitude Determination and Control
Systems (ADCS) utilizing torque rods to control detumble and orbital attitude. This paper describes the
design and construction and testing of GT-1’s torque rods and will serve as a resource to help guide future
torque rod iterations. The first section details the equations and mathematics behind torque rods. Next, the
design section considers factors influencing the magnetic dipole moment including core material, part length,
and radius. It then describes the manufacturing and assembly process of torque rods involving core shaping
and layer winding. It then describes the test setup to test the torque rod’s magnetic dipole moment and later
indicates topics of future work.