Scaling Laws for Deployable Mesh Reflector Antennas

Abstract

This paper begins with the formulation of a general, rapid design method for deployable mesh reflector antennas based on the AstroMesh architecture. This method is then used to obtain estimates of the total mass, stowed envelope size, and fundamental natural frequency of vibration for antennas with a range of aperture diameters and focal lengths, assuming an operational radio frequency of 10 GHz. A study of the scaling trends of this reflector design shows that the distribution of prestress in the inner tension structure has a major impact on the mass of the outer perimeter truss. Based on this result, a prestress optimization problem to design reflectors of minimum mass is formulated, and analytical scaling laws are obtained for the mass, stowed envelope, and natural frequency of optimally prestressed reflectors with aperture diameters up to 200 m. It is then shown that aperture diameters of 70–100 m are at the limit of launchers that are currently available or under development. A semianalytical homogenization model that accurately estimates the fundamental natural frequencies for batten-supported and free-free boundary conditions is also presented.