Date of Award

Spring 1991

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering

Program/Concentration

Engineering Mechanics

Committee Director

Thomas E. Alberts

Committee Member

Sushil K. Chaturvedi

Committee Member

Gene Hou

Committee Member

Ann Carlson

Call Number for Print

Special Collections; LD4331.E57C469

Abstract

The NASA Space Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SRMS), due to its long reach and light weight construction has significant structural flexibility. Thus any routine use of SRMS often results in large amplitude oscillations with long settling time. A passive damping technique utilizing a constrained viscoelastic layer damping treatment has been proposed to augment the active control of these oscillations in order to enhance the system stability and the end effector positional accuracy. This thesis concerns with the thermal compatibility analysis of the proposed damping treatment. The necessity for thermal compatibility analysis arises from the fact that acceptable damping performance of viscoelastic material of the damping treatment is greatly influenced by temperature. In the space environment, the SRMS is subjected to various heat sources and sinks. A thermal mathematical model is created to solve this complex heat transfer problem. A model input file for the radiation analysis program TRASYS is prepared to define all the necessary parameters such as the surface properties and the geometry of the model, the orbit definition, the orientation of the Shuttle orbiter, and other information that describes an orbital mission. The radiation conductors from all the model elements to other elements, and to the space, along with the orbital heating rates are obtained from a TRASYS run. The radiation conductors and the orbital heating rates along with the thermal capacitances and conductances of the SRMS elements are input to the transient thermal analysis package SINDA which outputs the temperature history of SRMS elements for an orbital mission.

Rights

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DOI

10.25777/c2r6-fp19

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