Additive Manufacturing for Lightweighting Satellite Platform
Source abstract
Abstract
Lightweight structures with an internal lattice infill and a closed shell have received a lot of attention in the last 20 years for satellites, due to their improved stiffness, buckling strength, multifunctional design, and energy absorption. The geometrical freedom typical of Additive Manufacturing allows lighter, stiffer, and more effective structures to be designed for aerospace applications. The Laser Powder Bed Fusion technology, in particular, enables the fabrication of metal parts with complex geometries, altering the way the mechanical components are designed and manufactured. This study proposed a method to re-design the original satellite structures consisting of walls and ribs with an enclosed lattice design. The proposed new structures must comply with restricted requirements in terms of mechanical properties, dimensional accuracy, and weight. The most challenging is the first frequency request which the original satellite design, based on traditional fabrication, does not satisfy. To overcome this problem a particular framework was developed for locally thickening the critical zones of the lattice. The use of the new design permitted complying with the dynamic behavior and to obtain a weight saving maintaining the mechanical properties. The Additive Manufacturing fabrication of this primary structure demonstrated the feasibility of this new technology to satisfy challenging requests in the aerospace field.
Source: crossref · Quality: baseline
Research context
OpenAlex topics: Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing Technologies · Additive Manufacturing Materials and Processes · Manufacturing Process and Optimization
SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.
Affiliations
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, Sapienza University of Rome, Via Eudossiana 18, 00184 Rome, Italy
References (66)
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