Surface Accuracy of Viscoelastic Composite Thin-Shell Deployable Reflector Antennas
Carbon fiber reinforced polymers are lightweight materials with high stiffness and failure strain, making them attractive for deployable space structures. However, their viscoelastic properties need to be addressed already during the initial design phase in order to ensure reliable deployment aswell as optimize the resulting accuracy and performance of the deploying structure. This paper presents a novel approach to combine the structural simulation of a composite thin-shell deployable reflector antenna with the fundamental modeling of viscoelastic effects. The developed simulation platform is utilized to study the life cycle of the reflector antenna including folding, stowage, deployment and recovery. The recovery performance is characterized by analyzing the root mean square error of the reflector surface and could be predicted to lie around 0.75 mm after deployment and around 0.12 mm after 92 days of recovery. A finite element model of a conical surface is utilized to predict the recovery behavior of a manufactured conical prototype.