A Novel Measurement Method for Linear Thermal Expansion Coefficient of Laminated Composite Material Tubular Specimen

Abstract

Materials of satellite integration truss frame are required to withstand temperature that range from about – 250 °C ~ + 150 °C. In order to reduce structural components deformation caused by such temperature change, material of truss frame mostly adopts laminated composite material tubes, whose linear thermal expansion coefficient (LTEC) is very small. Therefore, accurate measurement of LTEC of truss frame materials over a broad temperature range is essential for successful mission. To address this issue, this paper proposes a general experiment platform for measuring LTEC of laminated composite material specimen reaching length up to one meter in the temperature range from – 100 °C to +100 °C. The platform uses light-density optical fiber probe to measure length variation and thermocouple to record temperature variation. Thereafter, the thermal expansion coefficient and its measurement uncertainty can be obtained by establishing and solving mathematical model. Finally, LTEC measurement of a tubular composite materials specimen is conducted. The experiment result demonstrates the validity and practicality of the experiment platform and the measurement accuracy of LTEC which can reach up to 10-7/°C.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ms.21.4.9708

Keywords

• laminated composite material, linear thermal expansion coefficient, length variation, uncertainty