Recent advance on design and manufacturing of composite anisogrid structures for space launchers

Anisogrid composite shells have been developed and applied since the eighties by the Russian technology aiming at critical weight structures for space launchers, as interstages and cone adapters. The manufacturing process commonly applied is based on the wet filament winding. The paper concerns with some developments of design and manufacturing recently performed at the Italian Aerospace Research Center on a cylindrical structural model representative of this kind of structures. The framework of preliminary design is improved by introducing the concept of suboptimal configuration in order to match the stiffness requirement of the shell and minimise the mass, in conjunction with the typical strength constraints. The undertaken manufacturing process is based on dry robotic winding for the lattice structure and for the outer skin, with the aid of usual rubber tooling and new devices for the automated deposition strategy. Resin infusion under vacuum bag and co-cure of the system of ribs and skin is finally applied out-of-autoclave, with the aid of a heated mandrel. With such approach an interstage structural model (scale factor 1:1.5) has been designed, manufactured and tested. Design requirements and loads refer to a typical space launcher whose baseline configuration is made in aluminium. The global mechanical test of the manufactured structure has confirmed the expected high structural performance. The possibility to reach substantial weight savings in comparison with the aluminium benchmark has been fully demonstrated.

► weight saving demonstrated by the anisogrid interstage model is close to 40%.
► An advanced setup for the robotic winding strategy has been efficiently applied.
► Resin infusion and out-of-autoclave cure provide an overall low-cost process.