Cold Gas Micro-Propulsion System Preliminary Design for 6U CubeSats

This Paper presents the preliminary design of a cold gas propulsion system for a 6U CubeSat intended to perform attitude control. The system must fit within a$\text{2 U}$volume of the$\text{6 U}$CubeSat and uses nitrogen ($\mathrm{N}_{2}$) as the propellant. Its performance parameters are as follows: tank pressure 40 bar, thrust per thruster 5 mN, a required$\Delta V 15 \mathrm{m} / \mathrm{s}$, and a specific impulse 60 s. The system consists of a propellant tank and four (04) thrusters dedicated to attitude control. The design process began with the sizing of the cold gas thruster and the design of the propellant tank. ANSYS software was used to perform structural simulation of the tank, while ANSYS Fluent was used to conduct CFD analysis on the designed cold gas thruster. Two different tank geometries were developed to store the required propellant mass, and two materials (aluminum alloy and titanium alloy) were evaluated. The results show that a spherical aluminum tank is the most appropriate choice for the cold gas propulsion system.