Surface adjustment of modular mesh antenna

Abstract

Mesh antennas have been selected as the main reflectors of large space antennas. The typical mesh antenna consists of metallic mesh shaped by a cable network and supporting structure. It is difficult to design the cable network because it is flexible. That is to say, the design parameters needed to achieve the desired cable network shapes are the tensions on the elements, not their length. This means that the engineer must use the analytical approach to design the geometry and element properties. This is the most significant problem in designing mesh antennas compared to conventional solid antennas. Mitsugi and Yasaka (1990) developed CASA (cable structure analyzer), a nonlinear solver for cable structures that can treat cable slacking and large element deformation. The result of cable structure analysis shows that all cable networks need surface adjustment to achieve high surface accuracy because manufacturing error in terms of cable length leads to very large surface errors. The impact depends on the cable network geometry and cable properties. It is difficult to adequately minimize the impact. The present paper verifies the concept of active surface adjustment by using a 1/3rd scale prototype model of a modular mesh antenna.