COMPOSITE PAYLOAD FAIRING STRUCTURAL ARCHITECTURE ASSESSMENT AND SELECTION

摘要

This paper provides a summary of the structural architecture assessments conducted and arecommendation for an affordable high performance composite structural concept to use on thenext generation heavy-lift launch vehicle, the Space Launch System (SLS).The Structural Concepts Element of the Advanced Composites Technology (ACT) project and itsfollow-on the Lightweight Spacecraft Structures and Materials (LSSM) project, was tasked withevaluating a number of composite construction technologies for specific Ares V components: thePayload Shroud, the Interstage, and the Core Stage Intertank. Team studies strived to address thestructural challenges, risks and needs for each of these vehicle components. Building on the workfrom ACT and LSSM, the Composites for Exploration (CoEx) project is focused ondemonstrating composite technologies for a Payload Fairing for SLS.This paper documents the evaluation and down selection of composite construction technologiesand evolution to the SLS Payload Fairing. Development of the evaluation criteria (also referredto as Figures of Merit or FOMs), their relative importance, and association to vehiclerequirements are presented. A summary of the evaluation results and a recommendation of thecomposite concept to baseline in the Composites for Exploration (CoEx) project are presented.The recommendation for the SLS Fairing is a Honeycomb Sandwich architecture based primarilyon affordability and performance with two promising alternatives, Hat stiffened and FiberReinforced Foam (FRF) identified for eventual program block upgrade.