Novel Surface Design of Deployable Reflector Antenna Based on Polar Scissor Structures
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Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering Open Access
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Novel Surface Design of Deployable Reflector Antenna Based on Polar Scissor Structures Pengyuan Zhao1,2,3, Jinguo Liu1,2*, Chenchen Wu1, Yangmin Li4 and Keli Chen1
Abstract Space-deployable mechanisms can be used as supporting structures for large-diameter antennas in space engineering. This study proposes a novel method for constructing the surface design of space reflector antennas based on polar scissor units. The concurrency and deployability equations of the space scissor unit with definite surface constraints are derived using the rod and vector methods. Constraint equations of the spatial transformation for space n-edge polar scissor units are summarized. A new closed-loop deployable structure, called the polar scissor deployable antenna (PSDA), is designed by combining planar polar scissor units with spatial polar scissor units. The overconstrained problem is solved by releasing the curve constraint that locates at the end-point of the planar scissor mechanism. Kinematics simulation and error analysis are performed. The results show that the PSDA can effectively fit the paraboloid of revolution. Finally, deployment experiments verify the validity and feasibility of the proposed design method, which provides a new idea for the construction of large space-reflector antennas. Keywords: Deployable structures, Polar scissor unit, Reflector antenna, Surface design 1 Introduction Large-sized reflector antennas with high gain and narrow beam are widely used in space detection, radio astronomy, satellite communications, and other areas. Such an antenna often needs to be folded into a smaller volume before it is sent to space because of the size requirements of launch vehicles. After the spacecraft enters the orbit, the antenna is expanded to its working state. Therefore, using deployable structures to realize a parabolic profile is a key technology of the space reflector antenna [1–3]. The surface of the antenna is a wire mesh, and the geometrical control of the reflecting surface is achieved by adjusting the tension of the cable net. The HALCA (Highly Advanced Laboratory for Communications and Astronomy) scientific satellite, launched by the Japan Institute of Space Science and the National Astronomical *Correspondence: [email protected] 1 State Key Laboratory of Robotics, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Science, Shenyang 110016, China Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Observatory of Japan, uses a radial extension antenna with many small triangular planes under tension to approximate the parabolic shape [4]. Furthermore, many scientists have studied the shape finding and pretightening force loading for cable membrane structures to achieve finer requirements for shape accuracy [5–8]. Although the scissor structure can also realize morphological adaptation in space, limited research has been conducted on its application in the field of large-scale space-deployable antennas. The deployabl
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