Analysis and fabrication of paraboloidal CFRP sandwich mirrors.

Abstract

The low areal weight requirements of telescopes in aerospace applications has driven the study on composite mirrors for several years. For example, the primary parabolic mirror in a balloon-borne, Cassegrain telescope required an optical quality better than 30 microns in figure RMS error. A parametric study on composite sandwich mirrors was conducted by using finite element analysis as well as optical analysis. The factors covered the cell sizes, core materials, core thicknesses, face layups, and support configurations. Based on theoretical calculations, many high quality spherical composite sandwich mirrors were generated by using a non-heat curing process. The CFRP faces and Nomex core were chosen as the baseline materials for mirror fabrication due to their high strength and low weight. The proposed replication method applied an interface layer between face and surface coat to eliminate print-through problems. Many important goals have been realized in those mirror samples with optical laser interferometer testing. These include the figure RMS error less than 2 microns and the surface RMS error less than 0.05 micron. The areal weights of the mirror samples are less than 7 kg/m². The thermal stability of these mirrors was observed from the optical results with thermal cycling tests. The proposed 2-meter parabolic composite sandwich mirror, with an areal weight of less than 10 kg/m², would consist of either [0/90/45/-45](s) layup faces with an optimal 3'' core or (QC) layup faces with a total core thickness of 5 inches. Both a ring support around the equator and the 18-point Hindle-type support would lead to the best optical quality under both self weight and thermal loading.