The Mechanical-Electrical-Thermal Integrated Design Method for the
Stable In-Orbit Electrical Performance of the Cable-Membrane-Truss
Antenna
Abstract
In order to improve the stability of the in-orbit electrical performance
of space-borne antennas, a mechanical-electrical-thermal integrated
method is proposed for the design of cable-membrane-truss antenna. The
functional surface of the antenna is a Kapton membrane (or metal wire
mesh) coated with a metal layer, which is fixed on the surrounding
deployable truss through a tensioning cable mesh. Firstly, the coupling
relationship between the mechanical characteristics of the
cable-membrane-truss structure, the spatial thermal environment, and the
electrical performance of the antenna reflector is studied, and a
mechanical electrical thermal multi-field coupling analysis model is
established. Then, with the initial pretension of the cable membrane as
the design value and the minimum and maximum directional coefficient of
the antenna at each position in orbit as the optimization objective, the
cable-membrane-truss antenna mechanical electrical thermal integrated
design optimization model was established, and a 30 meter aperture
satellite antenna integrated optimization design simulation was
conducted. The simulation results show that using the proposed
mechanical-electrical-thermal integrated design method in this paper,
the stability of the in-orbit electrical performance of the
cable-membrane-truss antenna is improved by approximately 39.1%. This
method can improve the stability of in-orbit electrical performance of
space-borne antennas.