Design and application of composite platform with extreme low thermal deformation for satellite

Thermal dimensional stability is an important issue for many space structures. An extremely low thermal deformation composite platform is designed with the prototype application in the satellite payload-mounting platform. The platform was achieved through using composite material to provide near-zero coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) and isolating the residual thermal expansion by flexible structure connection to obtain the entire stability rather than the traditional thermal control technology, which is energy-consuming. Firstly, the design of systematical scheme with near-zero CTE is investigated, by which the extremely low CTE components of satellite structure were developed. Then, a flexible connecting method is proposed to further minimize the thermally induced deformation through “deformation isolation”. The effectiveness of this method is demonstrated by finite element analyses and further verified by physical Composite Fiber Reinforced Plastics (CFRP) prototype. The experiment results of the prototype recorded a 90% reduction measured by theodolites and projection moiré methods. The thermally induced pointing accuracy is dramatically decreased from 72.6″ down to 3.6″ in the flexible connection compared with the rigid connection, while the panel wrapping displacement reduced from 1.013 mm to 0.104 mm. The result proves that this method is effective to the thermal deformation isolation so that it has an extraordinary potential to engineering practical application.