| dc.description.abstract | The material selection, design, manufacturing method, and in-service environmental conditions, such as temperature and vibration, are all critical factors in the design of a CubeSat nano-satellite. Furthermore, as weight is a critical factor, to make a lighter CubeSat for space research, it is considered to use aluminum alloys. If considering the use of flexible additive manufacturing, various aluminum alloys may be suitable, while some are not. As an example, AlSi10Mg could be a suitable alloy to construct a CubeSat, as it has been successfully used in additive manufacturing.
In the first part of the thesis, the Nano-Racks CubeSat Deployer (NRCSD) system is illustrated, in terms of the requirements for small satellite launches. This system will be explained in the part (2-3-2) of the thesis. The defined requirements exerted on all parts of the mission will be examined.
In the second part of the thesis, the concept of topological optimization (TO) during design, along with additive manufacturing technology are explained, and then the aluminum alloys which can be produced by additive manufacturing method are investigated. In the third Chapter, the designed CubeSat, which resulted from applying the TO method, subjected to different loading in a simulated launch/space environment is investigated. Optimization of the designed CubeSat in this part is done using the NISA software. The results due to applying loads and adequate boundary conditions (BC) helped to design an optimized CubeSat in TO. Final design and approving of the CubeSat design in launch circumstances can be assessed by doing FEA on the shape in NISA. In the fourth Chapter, the validity of the CubeSat design, by introducing some major tests, has been investigated. In the fifth Chapter simulation results of two different kinds of CubeSats are shown, to validate the methods of FEA application | en_US |
