Chudnov

An obligatory element of mirror space antennas is a reflector which is a thin-walled shell of a parabolic or hyperbolic form. When a spacecraft enters the area of the Earth's shadow, temperature changes may cause temperature deformations; this may lead to distorting the shape and interfering with radiocommunications. For this reason, design decisions regarding mirror reflectors of space antennas must be confirmed by ground tests. A new method for the thermal vacuum test of a full-scale precision space reflector made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic was proposed in this work. Stability of the reflector’s shape within a wide range of temperatures was estimated by a contactless method; this method is based on heating of a reflector with a solar radiation simulator in a vacuum chamber with its walls cooled by liquid nitrogen.

The authors propose a mathematical model of polymer composite armored with fillers of various sizes. It is shown that the obtained theoretical relations allow to predict physical-mechanical properties of certain material reliably and to determine an optimal variant of filling with micro- and nano-inclusions.

In this article the authors present polymer composite materials based on polyester matrix modified with carbon nanotube; these materials were investigated and manufactured. The obtained results of microstructural investigation of samples indicate a promising outlook of using carbon nanotube as nano-modificator for increasing the strength characteristics of polymer composites.

 The results of structural survey of carbon fibers and epoxy micro carbon fiber composite were presented in this article. Attempt to determine damage mechanism of micro carbon fiber composite while in long operation was made, based upon the obtained results.