Micromechanical modeling of deployment and shape recovery of thin-walled viscoelastic composite space structures

The first part of the paper presents an experimental study of the deployment and shape recovery of composite tape-springs after stowage at an elevated temperature. It is found that tape-springs deploy quickly and with a slight overshoot, but complete recovery takes place asymptotically over time. Stowage has the effect of slowing down both the shortterm deployment and long-term shape recovery. The second part of the paper presents a micromechanical finite element homogenization scheme to determine the effective viscoelastic properties of woven composite laminas. This solution scheme is employed in numerical simulations of deployment and shape recovery of composite tape-springs. The proposed micromechanical model predicts both the short-term deployment and long-term shape recovery response with close agreement to the experimental measurements

Micromechanical modeling of deployment and shape recovery of thin-walled viscoelastic composite space structures

The first part of the paper presents an experimental study of the deployment and shape recovery of composite tape-springs after stowage at an elevated temperature. It is found that tape-springs deploy quickly and with a slight overshoot, but complete recovery takes place asymptotically over time. Stowage has the effect of slowing down both the shortterm deployment and long-term shape recovery. The second part of the paper presents a micromechanical finite element homogenization scheme to determine the effective viscoelastic properties of woven composite laminas. This solution scheme is employed in numerical simulations of deployment and shape recovery of composite tape-springs. The proposed micromechanical model predicts both the short-term deployment and long-term shape recovery response with close agreement to the experimental measurements

Manufacturing Of Thin-Shell Offset Demonstrator Reflector

This paper presents manufacturing and testing of a 1/3-scaled demonstrator of a full-scale thin-shell reflector. The demonstrator reflector is an offset reflector with a diameter of 2 m, and a focal length of 1.6 m, and an offset distance of 0.1 m. The reflector structure is a simple monolithic structure, and consists of a reflector surface and a skirt. The skirt is an integral part of the reflector and used to stiffen the reflector. The demonstrator is made of plain-woven carbon/epoxy by vacuum assisted resin infusion process. It is aimed that the manufactured reflector has a low manufacturing cost, a high precision surface, and demonstrates capability of folding and deploying