Space Crew Modules & Satellites

Fibersim™ Software Supports the Next Generation of Spacecraft Design & Manufacturing

As composites have received growing acceptance in a variety of industries, including aerospace, the space industry has taken note. Whether it is a spacecraft, rocket or satellite system, the space industry is relying more and more on composites.
Vistagy has been a leader in the composite design-to-manufacturing process for over 15 years and Fibersim composites engineering software has been used on many space programs, including the Boeing Delta Series Rockets, NASA’s Orion and composite crew module programs, and SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. Fibersim provides the necessary CAD integrated software tools to reliably design and manufacture optimized composite structures and delivers several key advantages, including:

• Design definitions that closely integrate with finite element analysis (FEA) software to enable a concurrent design and analysis process
• Producibility simulations that alert design and manufacturing engineers early in the process to possible manufacturing issues
• Seamless transfers of all design data to manufacturing for multiple processes, including manual layup, resin transfer molding, automated fiber placement (AFP), and tape laying (ATL)

With the new generation satellites and space tourism applications that are on the horizon, Vistagy and Fibersim are ready to help meet the demand of the next generation in the space industry.
Satellites

The satellite industry, much like the space launch vehicle industry, must endeavor to create high performance, optimized structures at as low of a cost as possible.

Composite structures have been of interest in the satellite industry for decades. Broadly speaking, the industry has two areas of interest: reflectors and core structure.

Satellite Reflectors
Satellite reflectors require dimensional stability over a wide range of temperatures to assure that the integrity of high frequency signals is maintained. A change due to temperature can be minimized by creating an antennae made from composite materials with a tightly controlled fiber orientation scheme. The use of composites provides an added benefit of a high stiffness-to-weight ratio.

An improperly designed reflector can be catastrophic for the operation of a satellite. Composite structures with a tailored coefficient of thermal expansion can provide a reflector that behaves predictably as it cycles through the temperature extremes of space.  Fibersim provides the ability to define these complex designs and iterate on them by communicating the design to thermal and structural analysis tools.

Core Structures
Satellite core structures support all the internal components of the satellite. One of the key requirements of the core structure is that it provides enough stiffness to isolate the internal components from the flight loads of the launch vehicle. The stiffness gained by using composites in the core structure can increase the weight of payload (including propellant), thereby enabling larger payloads to be delivered into orbit that last a longer time in orbit due to the increased propellant.

Fibersim’s ability to rigorously create composite definitions and pass the information to analysis tools allows the core structure to be optimized for this purpose, leading to reduced lifecycle and manufacturing costs for the satellite.

Crew Modules

Developing crew module designs with high composite material content provides the possibility to extend the successes achieved with composites in commercial aerostructures into space structures. The advantages of strength and stiffness at reduced weight give crew module designers the flexibility to enhance the safety and increase the comfort of the crew while decreasing the cost.

The use of composite materials in crew modules provides opportunities for significant weight and lifecycle cost savings.

By using composites-specific design tools, such as Fibersim, organizations can achieve significant weight savings relative to aluminum structures, so composite materials represent an area of great potential for crew modules.

Also, part consolidation through the use of composite-specific design methods represents an opportunity to reduce part count and therefore overall lifecycle costs for a crew module.

These two major advantages—reduced weight and decreased lifecycle cost—present organizations involved in manned space flight with the opportunity to create leading edge products for the next generation of space exploration.

Learn more about Fibersim.