• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.78-86
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• 2019

This paper describes the stiffness optimization of the torsion spring hinge of the large SAR antenna considering the deployment performance. A large SAR antenna is folded in a launch environment and then unfolded when performing a mission in orbit. Under these conditions, it is very important to find the proper stiffness of the torsion spring hinge so that the antenna panels can be deployed with minimal impact in a given time. If the torsion spring stiffness is high, a large impact load at the time of full deployment damages the structure. If it is weak, it cannot guarantee full deployment due to the deployment resistance. A multi-body dynamics analysis model was developed to solve this problem using RecurDyn and the development performance were predicted in terms of: development time, latching force, and torque margin through deployment analysis. In order to find the optimum torsion spring stiffness, the deployment performance was approximated by the response surface method (RSM) and the optimal design was performed to derive the appropriate stiffness value of the rotating springs.