Suppression of Out-of-Plane Thermal Deformation of CFRP Reflectors by Linear Actuators

抄録

Carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) is considered to be one of the possible materials for reflectors of space-based astronomical observation systems because of its high specific elasticity and low coefficient of thermal expansion. However, it was demonstrated that non-negligible out-of-plane thermal deformation would be generated on CFRP reflectors. In this study, capability of a method of suppressing the out-of-plane thermal deformation was examined. In the proposed method, surface shape of the reflectors was controlled by applying external forces with linear actuators so that RMS error due to the thermal deformation was minimized. As a result, it was shown that the out-of-plane thermal deformation caused by fiber orientation error in manufacturing process could be suppressed significantly by the proposed simple method. Sensitivity analysis on location of actuators and input forces was also performed and it was seen that the location of actuators and the input forces need to be controlled strictly to realize high precision surface shape control of CFRP reflectors.