Friction drive characterization breadboard: test results

The drive and bearing technologies have a major impact on the static and dynamic performance of steerable structures such as telescope and dome. Merging drive and bearing system into friction drive mechanical devices (bogie) can reduce the complexity and cost of the design. In the framework of ELT design study (European FP6) a breadboard test setup was realized to test and evaluate the static and dynamic behavior of such bogies. In this paper some of the characterization test results are presented. Characterization of the bogies and the setup structure in the frequency domain, quantification and measure of the most important parameters of the friction forces, the control of the bogies and the tracking performance of the test setup are among the main results discussed in this paper.