Mechanical design for industrialization of a deployable structure for Low Earth orbiting satellites constellations

• A mechanically and electrically functional deployable antenna. • Target for low LEO orbit telecommunication satellite applications. • Design, simulation and manufacturing of experimental models on a reduced scale. • Design optimization to reduce the number of components. • Anechoic chamber measurements to validate technical requirements. The new constellations of communication satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) are changing the space landscape; these thousands of objects launched into space stand out especially for offering greater coverage and lower latency but putting a satellite constellation into orbit represents a great challenge from the manufacturing point of view since large volumes of units need to be manufactured in the shortest possible time. This work focuses on the mechanical design of a deployable structure for a UHF band helical antenna. The proposed mechanical design is based on the concept of “Design Focused Manufacturing and Assembly DFMA”, since from an industrial perspective, productivity can be maximized by implementing a flexible mechanical design with as few components as possible, thus presenting an easy configuration during the integration and testing phase. For the structural validation of the design, mechanical simulations are performed to study the static and dynamic behavior. In the second stage of this study, several prototypes are manufactured for their kinematic analysis, experimental tests are performed, and structural behavior data are obtained from the use of accelerometers and data collection systems. The data obtained are processed by means of scripts, this will allow the mechanical characterization of the prototypes and later validate them with simulation studies. To verify this concept, the antenna has been integrated into a real prototype that has been measured in the Anechoic Chamber of Ilmenau, showing a high correlation between simulation and measurements. Finally, the impact of the proposed concept on the flight performance of the satellite is analyzed by performing an orbital dynamics analysis to determine the life cycle of the satellite and to understand how the proposed design will affect the orbital parameters.