Preliminary Design of Deployable Flexible Shell Reflector of an X-band Satellite Payload

摘要

Preliminary design of a self-deployable CFRP flexible shell reflector is presented for X-band satellite payload. The requirements, space qualified materials and their properties, finite element modeling of the reflector of 3 m diameter are given. The natural frequency, thermo-elastic and folding analysis of the reflector are performed. Folding concepts based on rolling two opposite edges of the reflector in a compact volume are studied. The folding and deployment of the reflector are demonstrated by a half size reflector manufactured. It is found that the developed flexible shell reflector has high potential for X-band payload with high stiffness/mass ratio, ease of manufacturing and low cost.