Développement du champ de gravité terrestre en harmoniques ellipsoïdales et applications

Abstract

The purpose of this work consists in representing the Earth's gravity field in ellipsoidal harmonics and to highlight the advantages of this method, compared to classical method developed in spherical harmonics based on a basic solid supposed to be a sphere. Here, we show how and why taking advantage of a basic solid supposed to be an ellipsoid. Indeed, with ellipsoidal harmonics, the dynamical flattening of the Earth (J2) is, as well, a coefficient characterizing the basis solid. The study is based on the article of R. Garmier and J.P. Barriot published in Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy, 79 (2001). A second part is devoted to an application of the theory developed in the first part : we show to what extent a smelting polar cap can induce, or not, significative perturbations on the motion of artificial satellite, and to over what time scale.

Date of Award	2005
Original language	French
Supervisor	Florent Deleflie (Co-Supervisor), Jacques HENRARD (Jury) & Anne Lemaitre (Supervisor)