Thermo-mechanical design of honeycomb panel with fully-potted inserts used for spacecraft design

To support focused science and engineering missions, spacecraft bus designs should minimize mass and maximize design flexibility without reducing capability. This requires a highly efficient spacecraft structure to maintain the required stiffness with a minimal mass. Honeycomb sandwich structure combines high flexural rigidity and bending strength with low weight and plays an increasing role in industry. Aluminium sandwich structures consist of thin, high-density outer and inner facings, and a thick, low-density core. They overcome the problem of increasing weight with increasing material thickness and are thus particularly useful in aerospace applications. In This paper the finite-element method FEM has been employed to study the thermo-mechanical behaviour of the hexagonal honeycomb panel. Fully coupled thermal-Modal analyses were conducted using the FEM to predict the frequencies modes and thermal coupling caused by the adjacent inserts under extreme thermal loading conditions. Detailed finite element models for honeycomb panels are developed in this study including the insert joints. New approach of the adhesive joint is modelled. Thermal simulations showed that the adjacent inserts causes the thermal coupling and the adjacent inserts are highly sensitive to the effect of elevated temperatures. The results of the equivalent models presented in this analysis are significant in the preliminary satellites structural dimensioning which present an effective approach of development by reducing the cost and the time of analysis.