Design And Manufacture Of Supporting Structure For Modular Deployable Parabpolic Antenna

Deployable supporting structure is the main part of deployable metal mesh antenna, which is necessary for supporting metal mesh to deploy and ensuring the surface accuracy of the antenna. High folding rate and high precision of the deployable supporting structure are the foundation of development of high-performance deployable antenna.The main target is to develop the deployable supporting structure which is composed by hexagonal platform module in this paper. Deployable metal mesh antenna is composed by deployable supporting structure, metal mesh and tie cables. tie cables are used to connect deployable supporting structure and metal mush. A special spherical surface which can be given by fitting the reflector shape (parabolic shape) is required for getting the shortest tie cable. The connection side between the deployable supporting structure and metal mesh is the hexagonal structure. If all of them are regular hexagonals, they can not form a spherical. So it is necessary to adjust the shape of hexagonal platform module. At the condition of all the modules having the same rib elements, the space equal surround circle method is given in this paper. The variation of angles between ribs in the module is also researched in this paper as the change of the antenna aperture and the number of module.Though analyzing advantages and disadvantages of the styles of deployable supporting structure, the best one has been established. Kinematic characteristic on rib element, module, seven modules and the rule of multi-module movement are analyzeed by MATLAB in this paper, which can provide a theoretical basis for structural design of deployable supporting structure.Though analyzing by ADAMS, the deployable supporting structure and a traction device are designed in this paper. The traction device can control the deployable speed through releasing ropes. The 3D models of them are constructed . Stress and strain of main force components has been obtained by statics analysis with ANSYS.The prototype of the deployable supporting structure is developed. The design of assembly toolings for rods and module ensures the assembly accuracy of poles and angle accuracy of ribs. The tension of cables can be controled by module assembly tooling. Finally, deployable function test and vibration test are completed on the prototype.