Abstract
Radio telescopes play an important role in lunar exploration projects, manned space flight projects, and navigation systems. China is constructing a giant 110 m aperture ground-based fully steerable radio telescope in Qitai County, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. In this paper, a 110 m aperture fully steerable radio telescope prestressed back frame structure is proposed and optimized to improve the reflector accuracy and to reduce the weight of the telescope. First, prestressed cables are introduced into the back frame structure, and three innovative cable layout schemes are presented. Second, for stress state analysis, the wind pressure distribution on the main reflector is explored using wind tunnel experiments. Third, some improvements in genetic algorithms for addressing computational complexity are explained. Finally, the effects of prestressed cables on the weight reduction and reflector accuracy improvement are analysed. Additionally, in order to evaluate the safety of the prestressed back frame structure, its strength has been checked, and the internal force and displacement under static conditions and in earthquakes are interpreted in detail.
Highlights
Large-aperture radio telescopes are greatly significant for the development of radio astronomy and space exploration [1,2,3]
The research object is the 110 m aperture fully steerable radio telescope prestressed back frame structure, and the optimization design is conducted to reduce the weight and improve the reflector accuracy
Innovative Prestressed Back Frame Structure. e fully steerable radio telescope is generally composed of a main reflector and a back frame structure, a subreflector and its supporting structure, a pitching device, and an azimuth mount
Summary
Large-aperture radio telescopes are greatly significant for the development of radio astronomy and space exploration [1,2,3]. The optimization design concept for large-aperture radio telescope structures has become more mature [10,11,12,13]. E essence of this concept is to obtain the displacement difference between the reflector’s nodes and the homogeneous surface through the initial analysis, establish some hypothetical displacement relationships, and make the deformation of the telescope meet the displacement using optimization design This method still cannot be applied in practice because if the structure has N nodes, 3N constraints will significantly exceed the design variables, resulting in no solution for equations. The research object is the 110 m aperture fully steerable radio telescope prestressed back frame structure, and the optimization design is conducted to reduce the weight and improve the reflector accuracy. The effects that prestressed cables have on reducing the weight and improving the reflector accuracy are analysed, and the structural safety is evaluated
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