| A fundamental investigation of the use of ultrasonic consolidation (UC) to produce deck panels for small satellites was undertaken. A series of experiments were performed to understand the issues associated with sandwich structure fabrication using UC, including peel test experiments which evaluated the bond strength for various geometric configurations and materials. Support materials were also investigated. A CAD model was created to integrate the experimental results with solid mechanics theory. It was then used to develop a build procedure for fabricating the deck. A finite element analysis using an equivalent properties method was performed. Three-point bending testing was used to evaluate the stiffness and results were found to correlate with numerical approximations. A sine sweep vibration test was performed to measure its natural frequencies. Finally, a case study was performed on a deck built for the TOROID spacecraft. The cost and benefits of UC fabrication versus traditional methods were analyzed. |
