DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF COLD GAS PROPULSION SYSTEM AND SOLAR

PANEL DEPLOYMENTMECHANISM FOR A LEO (LOW EARTH ORBIT) SATELLITE

Hassaan Munawar , Muhammad Tayyab , Abdullah Khalil , Richardson.P.Joseph.
Advisor: MR. SHAKEEL AHMED
Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering
NED University of Engineering & Technology
SOLAR PANEL DEPLOYMENT:

PRESSURE VESSEL DESIGN

Deployment of solar panels has considerable influence on

dynamic and attitude control of satellite and may make
disturbances. To prevent and minimize of these disturbances in
attitude control of a satellite, it is necessary to design a
deployment mechanism for the solar panels which has
appropriate performance and ability to control the disturbances
and also can be constructed.
The mechanism should make constant angular velocity, and it is
preferred to be simple and to have small weight and high
performance. Because of these things, deployment mechanism
involves a torsion spring for deployment and tape spring for
locking mechanism. Locking of solar panels at intended position
is necessary for satellite to perform its mission successfully. The
deployment mechanism should have high precision and reliability.
Consequently, the analysis on the dynamic behavior of the
deployment mechanism must be done at initial design stage.

The spherical pressure vessel was considered

MAJOR TASKS OF THE PROJECT:

TORSION SPRING DESIGN AND ANALYSIS

Material Selection:

t = 6 mm

Ultimate Tensile Strength = 993 MPa

Modulus of Elasticity = 114 GPa
Tensile Yield Strength = 924 MPa
Shear Strength = 760 MPa
Hole for boss
insertion
Flange for TIG
welding

R = 435 mm

Titanium alloys undergo

about 20% deformation in
spin forming. Hence the
blank should be 20 % less
in surface area than the
surface in the area of
hemisphere.

Designing of Cold Gas Thruster

Performance of CD Nozzle
Flow & Stress Analysis of Thruster(Fluent)

M2
Solar Panels

Designing of Pressure Vessel

Issues in Solar Panel Deployment
Solar panel being
deployed in a Satellite
Designing & Analysis of Tape Spring(Abaqus)
Designing of Double Torsion Spring

COLD GAS THRUSTER DESIGNING

Assumptions for Flow conditions

Isentropic Flow

Bracket for attachment

with satellite body

TAPE SPRING-DESIGN AND ANALYSIS

One-Dimensional Flow
Steady Flow
FLOW ANALYSIS IN NOZZLE USING
FLUENT

Basic Spring Calculations

1. Wire diameter (d) = 0.2938 in.
2. Tentative mean diameter at maximum
3. working position.
DT = 10 (d) = 10 (0.2938) = 2.938 = 3 in

Boundary conditions; Element Type is S4R which is a 4 node

doubly curved general purpose shell element Structured
meshing method was used .
Flow behavior in CD
nozzle
Element type: SOLID92 3-D
10-Node Tetrahedral
Structural Solid
Aluminum was considered
with a nozzle thickness
value of 1 mm.
Max stress = 103 MPa
Yield point = 255 MPa
(Aluminum 6061-T6 Alloy )

Fully
deformed
shape(Abaqu
B- Solution
s)
Since the analysis is geometrically nonlinear, so, the function
NLGEOM was
The isometric view of
designed tape spring

Meshed model of
a Tape Spring

used.
The solution of this nonlinear problem is found by breaking the simulation
into increments The minimum and maximum increment size defined is 0.001
and 0.01 respectively.
For the convergence of solution. Therefore automatic stabilization option is
used with a dissipated energy fraction of 0.0002 and adaptive stabilization
with maximum ratio of stabilization to strain energy equal to 0.05.

Acknowledgements
Shear Stress

Continued collaboration of NED University of Engineering and

Technology and SUPARCO is highly acknowledged.