DESIGN OPTIMIZATION OF THE SUPPORT STRUCTURE OF A NANOSATELLITE

Akshay K. Gulati and Chandramouli Padmanabhan

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India e-mail: mouli@iitm.ac.in The satellite needs to meet strict mechanical requirements in order to survive the harsh launch environment. The key challenges include satisfying constraints on the rigidity, mass and center of gravity of the satellite apart from survivability during vibration qualification testing. The objective of the study is to design the support structure for the payload to satisfy the requirements imposed by the launch vehicle. Owing to the high mass (8kg) and the fieldof-view requirements of the payload, a design involving a unique truss frame that supports the payload is proposed for the satellite support structure. Panels embedded in the truss frame support the subsystem PCBs on it. The satellite structure has to be structurally optimized for maximizing the natural frequency while keeping the mass minimum. This was carried out using the FEA software ABAQUS. Finally the optimized frame was subjected to quasi-static loading, random, harmonic and shock vibrations experienced during launch. A structural mock-up is being fabricated to test it for launch vibrations.

1.

Introduction

Nanosatellite development has been there for over five decades since the launch of the 4.5 kg OSCAR-11. With a lot of universities initiating such projects, miniaturization of sophisticated payloads has been taken to a new level. Hence there is a huge demand for a low cost standard satellite bus. The challenge lies in making a structure of minimal mass so that the ratio of the masses of payload over satellite structure is high. iitmsat is a student satellite project that aims at measuring variations in electron and proton fluxes in LEO (Low Earth orbit). The scientific purpose of this study is to see the effect on particle counts (electrons and protons) from lightning storms, solar flares and other earth based phenomena. The satellite mass is around 15 kg and shall be using a special launch vehicle adapter (IBL230) which has been developed by Indian Space Research Organization for nanosatellites. The IBL230 is a pyro actuated Ball Lock separation system with a mounting diameter of 230 mm and which can support satellites up to 30 kg.

2.

Design Objectives

The satellite structure should support housekeeping and payload components. The requirements for the satellite design are explained in the Table 1 and 2. The longitudinal axis is the axis normal to the face of the satellite mounted to the launch vehicle.

ICSV19, Vilnius, Lithuania, July 8-12, 2012

19th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Vilnius, Lithuania, July 8-12, 2012
Table 1. Key structural requirements2

Maximum mass of the structure Global fundamental Longitudinal mode natural frequency Lateral mode Longitudinal Quasi static loading Lateral Longitudinal Center of gravity Lateral Frequency (Hz) 100 1000 5000

4 kg 90 Hz 45 Hz 11g 6g 3 mm 200 mm

Table 2. Shock response spectrum defined for all 3 axes2

Max acceleration level (g) 20 g 1000 g 1000 g

There is a lot of literature on the static and random response of satellite structures but the studies on stresses caused due to shock generated during launch is limited. So carrying out a shock analysis was deemed very necessary. The main system drivers for the structure design are derived from the position and orientation of the following system components. Solar cell panels: The satellite lateral faces support the solar cell panels. The dimensions of these panels determine the volume envelope of the satellite. The lateral faces should not deflect much to avoid the failure of the panel PCBs. Housekeeping electronic PCBs: These shall be mounted on the face panels from the inside. Payload: The payload needs 180 field of view and hence should be placed such that the aperture of the payload (239 x 259 mm) is attached to one face of the satellite. The mass of the payload is 8 kg. IBL230: It has two levels. The upper level or the Fore End (FE) ring is rigidly attached to the satellite and after launch continues to orbit along with the satellite. The bottom ring (AE ring) is attached to the launch vehicle. The objective is to design a satellite structure that can accommodate these requirements and survive the launch vibrations. Hence the structure shall be optimized to increase the natural frequency while keeping stresses on the satellite acceptable during quasi-static acceleration and shock vibration.

3.

Preliminary design

In the space industry, a satellite main frame is made from honeycomb panels or machined aluminium alloy structure. Nowadays some satellites are experimenting with composite structures such as CFRP as well. Due to the time scale and the expertise of the students, it was decided to go ahead with a structure fabricated from aluminium alloy. The primary material chosen for the flight model is aluminium 6061-T6 as it has high bending stiffness and bending strength, is lightweight, easily machinable and used widely in space applications. The satellite is cuboid in shape as the payload which is the largest part in the satellite is cuboid and a cuboid shape is a good shape for efficient packaging of subsystem components in the satellite. The design also had to include factors such as ease of assembly and ease of fabrication. This implied that the structure should be assembled using minimum parts. Owing to large the volume of the satellite, the structure had to be made from different blocks of aluminium and then assembled using fasteners. Hence the truss structure and the face panels were integrated to reduce the 2

19th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Vilnius, Lithuania, July 8-12, 2012 number of structural members. The overall design is to have one panel for each face except the face having the payload aperture. The FE ring of the IBL230 will integrate to the bottom panel of the satellite. The internal configuration of components is determined by the position of the payload. Since the FE ring is attached on the bottom panel, the payload has to be placed at the top face of the satellite so as to satisfy all requirements such as lateral Centre of gravity and field of view constraints. The subsystem electronics will be placed on the lateral panels and the bottom panel to avoid interference with the payload.

Figure 1. Exploded view of the structure of the satellite

3.1 Design proposal The structure comprises of five face panels. All the panels are joined to each other by fasteners. The internal threading for the screws will be achieved by using helical inserts of size M3, M4 and M6. The panels have lateral and longitudinal bars at the edges. The longitudinal bars of Z axis panels have support structures to support the payload. Ease of assembly and machining to design while designing these supports was taken into account. To increase the rigidity of the structure, stiffeners are placed that run diagonally across the panel. The exploded view of the satellite can be seen in Fig. 1. 3.1.1 Design of bottom panel The bottom panel is the one that shall be attached to the FE ring through eight M6 fasteners. For the support to be effective a thick circular rib was designed that comes directly above the FE ring. This was done in view of the uncertainty of the stress distribution on the FE ring. Fastening locations at the edges were designed so that the bottom panel can be fixed on to the adjacent panels with two sets of fasteners that attach in two perpendicular axes with each panel. This design is similar to the design proposed for Pratham3 nanosatellite. The distance of each fastener from the edge is maintained to be more than 1.5xD of the screw shank hole which is suggested by Kissell4. The mass of the bottom panel is 815 g. The design of the bottom panel can be seen in Fig. 2.

19th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Vilnius, Lithuania, July 8-12, 2012

Figure 2. Bottom panel of the satellite

Figure 3. Design options 1, 2 and 3 for the lateral panel of the satellite

3.1.2 Design of lateral panels There are four lateral panels on the satellite. Two Z axis panels (Z+ and Z-) support the payload and the other two Y axis panels (Y+ and Y-) support the Z axis panels. Each of them is a 2 mm thick plate with stiffeners on the edges and face diagonal. Three design options were considered for the lateral faces and trade-off studies were carried out to choose the best one. The options are given in Fig. 3. The first option has a single stiffener that connected two corners of the face diagonal. This had to be discarded as high displacements (up to 1.6 mm) were observed on the panel during longitudinal shock vibration (see Fig. 4) which can cause damage to the solar panel. The second option has three stiffeners joining the payload supports and both the payload supports to the midpoint of the bottom edge. In this design, high stresses were observed at the diagonal bars as the structure was highly rigid. The third design involves two bars, first that connects the payload supports and the second connects one of the payload supports to the bottom corner of the face. The stresses observed here are lower than option 2 and the maximum displacement observed at the lateral panels is 0.49 mm. The mass of all of the three options for Z panels is nearly same of about 900 g. Similarly the mass of all the three options for X panels is nearly 715 g. Hence the third design was chosen for the final version for the Z axis and the Y axis panels.

19th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Vilnius, Lithuania, July 8-12, 2012

Figure 4. Displacement contour view for design option 1. Maximum displacement is 1.615 mm

Figure 5. Displacement contour view for design option 3. Maximum displacement is 0.49mm

Figure 6. Cross section of the bottom panel (grey). The fixed BC is seen on one of the fasteners (green)

19th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Vilnius, Lithuania, July 8-12, 2012 3.2 Analysis The solid model was modelled in SolidWorks 2011 and the finite element analysis was carried in ABAQUS 6.10. The model was meshed with C3D10 (10-node quadratic tetrahedron, 3 DOF) elements and the parts were joined to each other with Tie constraints. Since the source of the shock vibration loads is the FE ring the satellite dynamics is modelled as a BASE motion at the fasteners between the satellite and the FE ring. Each fastener and the helicoil assembly together are modelled as a single cylinder. The bottom face of this cylinder is the fixed boundary condition. This boundary condition is more rigid than the real case as this does not include the FE ring. The FE ring if incorporated in the model would allow flexibility in the boundary condition. However the boundary condition is good enough to analyse the response at positions away from the boundary condition. Stresses were calculated for quasi-static loading and shock vibration. Also the natural frequencies of the satellite were calculated using a free vibration study. Shock vibration has been simulated using a mode based procedure using a summing technique defined as the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) method. The damping has been set to 5% for the analysis. According to Cranfield5, NRL method is a good method to calculate the stress induced by shock vibration but is not good for measuring acceleration response.

Figure 7: The first six mode shapes of the satellite for the free vibration study Table 3. First six natural frequencies of the satellite

Mode number 1 2 3 4 5 6

Natural frequency (Hz) 161.52 164.25 329.24 435.29 455.32 525.78

19th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Vilnius, Lithuania, July 8-12, 2012 3.3 Results The first six natural frequencies and mode shapes of the satellite are given in Table 4 and Fig. 8. From the results we can see that the first natural frequency obtained is 161.5 Hz which is more than the requirements of the launch vehicle. The first three modes are global and the remaining modes are local. The von Mises stress due to shock vibration and quasi-static acceleration were calculated for longitudinal and lateral axis. The results shown are in the Table 4. The stress concentrations near the regions where the boundary conditions have been imposed have not been considered for the maximum stress tabulated in the table. Payload is designed such that it can survive the shock vibration and hence is not investigated for stresses. In the longitudinal shock, highest stresses are observed near the central circular rib and the centre of the bottom plate of up to 150 MPa. The lateral panels are safe and the stresses do not exceed 75 MPa. For the lateral (X) shock vibration, the highest stresses are observed at all the interfaces between bars which are in the range of 100-125 MPa. The bottom plate does not have high stress in this case.
Table 4. Maximum stress experienced by the satellite structure (in MPa)

Case Longitudinal Lateral (X)

Shock 150 128

Quasi-static 30 20

Figure 8. von Misses stress (in Pa) due to SRS input in the longitudinal axis and the lateral (X) axis

4.

Conclusions

The stresses due to the shock vibration are much higher than the quasi-static acceleration. An optimised support structure for a nanosatellite has been verified for survivability during launch. The mass of the satellite structure is 3.87 kg which satisfies the mass requirement. Further work can be done on the satellite structural modelling in the following areas. A detailed finite element analysis has to be carried out that includes components such as PCBs and antenna appendages. The uncertainties in the modeling of boundary condition and damping should be verified experimentally and used accordingly for the following design iterations. The interface between two panels currently is modeled as a tie constraint but should be ultimately modeled as a fastener joint with pre-tensioned bolts. 7

19th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Vilnius, Lithuania, July 8-12, 2012

REFERENCES
1

Madhavendra Richharia, Leslie David Westbrook, Satellite Systems for Personal Applications: Concepts and Technology, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., UK, (2010). Chandramouli J, George Koshy. Launch service for small satellites in ISRO's launch vehicles, Proceedings of the 1st Indian Small Satellite Systems Conference, 2010, Bengaluru, India, 28 April, (2010). Ankit Chiplunkar, R Pai, A Subramanyam. (2011). Analysis and Validation of the Structure of Pratham, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay's First Student Satellite. [Online.] available:http://www.aero.iitb.ac.in/pratham/otherdocs/Paper_for_Structures.pdf Kissell, Ferry, Aluminum Structures, A Guide to Their Specifications and Design, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 251-289, (2002). Nadeem SIAM, Development of an Efficient Analysis Method for Prediction and Structural Dimensioning of Space Structures Subjected to Shock Loading, Master of Science Thesis, Cranfield University, 2010:078, (2010).