Structural Design and Analysis of an Earth Observation 3U CubeSat for Hyperspectral Imaging
P.R. Mitra (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
V. Yaghoubi Nasrabadi – Mentor (TU Delft - Group Yaghoubi Nasrabadi)
I. Uriol Balbin – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Group Uriol Balbin)
N.D. Eskue – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Group Eskue)
Bernard Foing – Mentor (ILEWG LUNEX EuroMoonMars)
Mojtaba Raouf – Mentor (Universiteit Leiden)
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Abstract
Hyperspectral imaging has a variety of commercially important applications in Earth observation because of its advanced functionalities that enable precise material identification. This thesis presents the structural design and analysis of a 3U CubeSat carrying a hyperspectral imaging payload, as part of the Earth Moon Education CubeSats mission by EuroMoonMars. Due to its high resource demands, hyperspectral imaging requires an efficient design of the structural subsystem to accommodate the payload and other subsystem components, but publicly available research on this is extremely limited. A CAD model of the complete CubeSat was first designed in Autodesk Fusion based on requirements from the dispenser. For every design version, structural FE analyses were performed in ANSYS Workbench to ensure that the CubeSat withstands the vibrational loads from the launch vehicle and the thermoelastic response from the thermal loads in orbit. After simplifying the geometry of the CAD model to reduce the computational effort, and applying appropriate loads and constraints, the analyses were run on a multi-core processor. The design of the CubeSat was finalised when the FE analyses resulted in positive margins of safety against yielding. Sensitivity analyses on uncertain parameters were conducted in optiSLang, and the results of these will be used for validating and updating the FE analyses, to be carried out in the next phase of the mission by testing a physical model of the CubeSat in dedicated setups.