Evaluation of thermal-deformation reduction method through prototyping space antenna's shape control mechanisms

Abstract

This study aims to develop an actively deformable space antenna system for radio astronomy around 100GHz. In order to reduce the thermal deformation in active control mechanisms composed of multiple materials, a method to cancel the mismatch of the coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) is proposed and tested. The CTE mismatch between piezoelements and Super Invar structures is cancelled by adding another metallic part. For effective CTE cancellation, this study clarifies the cause of thermal deformation induced by the preloading mechanisms for a piezoelectric stack actuator. In addition, it shows the effect of the dimension tolerance of the piezoelements is significant, but still manageable by the proposed CTE cancellation method. The effectiveness of proposed method is validated by the use of finite-element analysis, prototyping models, and thermal deformation measurement experiments.

Keywords

• space antenna
• space structures
• smart structures
• adaptive structures
• thermal deformation
• coefficients of thermal expansion mismatch cancellation