Abstract
Ensuring the structural safety of a deployable solar panel under a severe launch vibration environment is one of the important factors for a successful CubeSat mission. A CubeSat’s deployable solar panel proposed in this study is effective to guarantee the structural safety of solar cells by attenuating launch loads owing to the superior damping characteristic achieved by a multilayered stiffener with viscoelastic acrylic tapes. The demonstration model of 3 U CubeSat’s deployable solar panel was fabricated and tested to validate the effectiveness of the proposed design. The basic dynamic characteristics of the solar panel were measured through free-vibration tests according to the various layers of the stiffener. Moreover, the characteristics of the deployed solar panel were measured and investigated under various temperatures to predict its capability under in-orbit operation. The effectiveness of the proposed design for launch vibration attenuation was demonstrated through qualification level sine and random vibration tests.
Highlights
A CubeSat is a cube-shaped nanoclass satellite platform having a volume of 1000 cm3 and a mass of 1.33 kg per a standard size of one unit (1 U) [1]
One technical solution to satisfy this increasing power demand is the adoption of a deployable solar panel taking into account the limited available area to install the solar cells owing to the extreme spatial constraint of a CubeSat structure
Many CubeSat vendors produce various configurations of flight-proven deployable solar panels based on the printed circuit board (PCB) substrate, which is advantageous for rapid fabrication and provides ease of electrical interconnection between the solar cells [7]
Summary
A CubeSat is a cube-shaped nanoclass satellite platform having a volume of 1000 cm and a mass of 1.33 kg per a standard size of one unit (1 U) [1]. In the case of previously developed deployable solar panels for CubeSat applications, the mechanical design strategy for the deflection minimization was to increase the panel stiffness by applying additional stiffeners made up of various materials like aluminium, carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic, or fiberglass laminate [11, 12]. The application of multiple mechanisms to a single panel could reduce the available area for solar cell attachment Another potential technical problem related to the deployable solar panel is an oscillation in the deployed panel induced by satellite attitude maneuvering, because it causes a rigid body motion in the satellite, which might degrade its pointing stability in-orbit [13]. We proposed a CubeSat’s PCB-based deployable solar panel employing a multilayered stiffener, interlaminated with viscoelastic acrylic tape, for ensuring the structural safety of the solar cells under severe launch vibration environments. The test results demonstrated that the design approach proposed in this study is effective to attenuate the launch loads for ensuring the structural safety of the solar panel in a launch environment
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