Abstract:
This study investigated the application of fibre reinforced composite
materials to spacecraft sandwich structures. In particular, aspects of the
manufacture, analysis and design optimisation of components fabricated
using the co-cure process were studied. The manufacturing process was
developed to ultimately enable a full size thrust tube structure to be
built using a single step cure, the design of which was verified by a modal
survey test. Techniques for the analysis of stiffness, strength., vibration
frequencies and local instability were established and found to correlate
well with tests on co-cured sandwich specimens. The current wrinkling
theory for composite faced sandwich was extended to the more general case
to allow facesheet constitutive matrix coupling and multiaxial loding to be
accomodated. The analytical methods were incorporated within simple
optimisation schemes, amenable to employment at the preliminary design
stage, to allow alternative feasible designs for panel and thrust tube
structures to be generated. These illustrated the benefits of the use of
composite materials and the co-cure manufacturing technique for spacecraft
sandwich components.