Astronomical survey camera shutter locking mechanism design, analysis, and testing

Abstract

During the launch phase of a survey camera, its shutter will experience a harsh dynamic environment. We propose an elastic compression scheme to prevent the shutter blade from hitting the surrounding structure. The elastic member has a maximum stress at each stage of locking. In order to make this stress as small as possible, we optimize the thickness of the elastic member from 1070 to 666 MPa, which meets the safety factor requirement. We perform finite element simulations and experiments on the locking mechanism, and the results show that the motor torque curves obtained from theoretical calculations, simulation analysis, and tests coincide well. The maximum locking torque of the locking mechanism obtained by theoretical calculations, simulation analysis, and experiments also coincide well, and all three of them are within the design target of about 25 N m, which meets the requirements of shutter locking torque greater than 20 N m. Our proposed elastic compression scheme effectively solves the problem of blade fixation during the shutter launch phase.