Elastic model

Satellites are connected by elastic cables. These cables, when stretched, exert tensile forces on the connected bodies. The cables are regarded as massless, connecting the point masses of the satellite bodies.

Hooke's Law is then used to calculate the force due to elastic tension. From this, another set of accelerations can be found. These are added to the gravitational accelerations already calculated. The sum of the accelerations is then used to calculate new velocities and locations.

In this applet, satellites are randomly connected by an elastic cable, as well as being initialized with random velocities. This makes for binaries which spin round each other, or more complex systems. Cable tension is shown by increasing intensity of blue, and compression by increasing intensity of red (although in this model no compressive forces are modelled).