Study on Anisotropic Characteristics of a CFRP Deformable Reflector System

Abstract

The characteristics of a CFRP deformable reflector system were investigated through experiments and numerical simulations. The CFRP reflector was mounted on an actuation system and deformed by three actuators, which were placed one each on three concentric lines that were 120° away from each other. In the experiments, three types of reflector deformation were achieved by operating each actuator individually, and the deformations were measured by a photogrammetric measurement system. The deformations were analyzed and compared using Zernike polynomials. The apparent anisotropic deformations of the quasi-isotropic CFRP shell were observed, and the tilt and astigmatism modes were determined to be outstanding. In order to investigate the effects of actuator stiffness, a few numerical simulations with higher stiffness of the actuators were performed. The results reveal that with the increased actuator stiffness, deformations became larger, while the outstanding modes did not vary.