Speakers
Description
The levels of space debris have become an even greater focus of the industry in previous years. The re-entry of spacecraft into the Earth’s atmosphere can contain fragments which are able to survive the loads and heat experienced during re-entry into the atmosphere. These same fragments will also have a probability to cause harm or damage to humans and the environment. Optical payloads are typically made of elements that have been shown with high probability to release exactly these fragments causing these issues.
To comply with stringent thermomechanical requirements for structures of optical payloads in Earth observation missions, optical benches must often be built from materials with low thermal expansion and at the same time provide high stiffness to weight ratios. Therefore, ceramics and carbon fibre reinforced plastics (CFRP) are a prevalent material choice for optical benches. While ceramics generally show a low demise-performance, survival during re-entry for CFRP optical benches strongly depends on the matrix material and specific design of the bench.
The objective of the DemOBench-activity is to investigate both design-solutions as well as potential material optimisations to improve the demise-behaviour of CFRP optical benches, while still fulfilling the thermomechanical performance requirements.
After the selection of a reference optical CFRP-bench with a state-of-the art design and definition of mission, demise, and thermomechanical requirements, the current work focuses on potential design and material alterations to improve the demise behaviour. Representative samples will be tested for demise-performance accompanied by re-entry simulations. During the end of the study, a full-size design-optimised breadboard will be developed. The breadboard design will be analysed via DRAMA re-entry analysis and structural simulations. Finally, mechanical and thermal testing will be carried out to evaluate the thermomechanical performance of the demise-optimized CFRP optical bench.