Field driven design of additively manufactured CubeSat chassis

Additive Manufacturing has several potential advantages for astronomical instrumentation. The creation of lightweight, custom parts with optimised geometries that cannot be produced with traditional manufacturing techniques is of particular benefit for space-based applications such as CubeSats where mass and volume accommodation are limited due to launch requirements.

Field driven design is a generative process which enables the creation of complex geometries based on 3- dimensional simulation data. Fields can be used to optimise lightweight, lattice structures thereby taking advantage of the benefits of additive manufacturing.

This paper presents the design and analysis of a novel, lattice CubeSat chassis based on the 6U Active Deployable Optical Telescope (A-DOT) platform. A custom, lightweight chassis with integrated mounting features was considered as A-DOT has a larger mass than typical CubeSats due to its deployable optics. Using finite element analysis (FEA) software, mechanical qualification vibration loads were applied to the CubeSat assembly to simulate launch conditions. These included modal analysis, quasi-static acceleration, and random vibration. A field was produced, combining the different simulation results; this was used to control density of planar lattices generated to fill the CubeSat chassis panel volume. The selected lattices were optimised to reduce mass while maintaining stiffness required to survive launch.

A single test CubeSat chassis panel was additively manufactured in Aluminium (AlSi10Mg).