Evaluation of the built-in stresses and residual distortions on cured composites for space antenna reflectors applications

Abstract Manufacturing and thermal distortion RMS is an important dimensional parameter which can be correlated with the antenna performances. For this reason it is used to characterize their allowed dimensional stability in order to guarantee the mission requirements. The antenna reflectors on board of space platforms are generally manufactured with composite materials. The RMS of these structures is very tightly connected with the technologies like curing cycles, kind of materials, lay up tipology, mould configuration etc. The maximum effort is produced to minimize this parameter due to the manufacturing, while the prediction methods able to correlate the residual distortions versus the applied technology can be very useful to optimize the hardware performances.