Description
The Thruster Fuel Model operates as an intermediary, seamlessly bridging the thruster and the spacecraft’s fuel sources. If the model does not have a fuel source set, it will attempt to attach to a fuel source on the spacecraft. In instances where a connection is unattainable, the thruster presumes optimal conditions. Furthermore, the properties of the model can be used to determine the intricacies of fuel consumption. This must be added to a Cold Gas Thruster component.
A diagram of the fuel flow chain can be seen below:
Below is the execution flow diagram of fuel flow in a simulation tick.
Example Use Cases
- Configure the fuel consumption parameters for thrusters:** With this model, the
SpecificHeatRatio,TotalTemperature,TotalPressurecan be specified to modify the thrusters’ fuel consumption rates.
Module Implementation
In this module, the thruster will set the DesiredFlowRate based on the required fuel to produce the requested thrust. Meanwhile, the fuel source will determine the ProvidedFlowRate and call UpdateFlowRateRatio with the ratio of desired to provided flow ratio. The fuel source will also split its fuel flow amongst all attached Thruster Fuel Models. The module will call UpdateFlowRateRatio to 1 if there is no fuel source.
The fuel source will always set provided fuel first before the thrusters request fuel as seen in the execution flow diagram. This is to prevent race conditions and allow dynamics to be in the same tick the fuel gets consumed. Due to this, the thruster will have a one-frame lag in consuming fuel.