Adaptive Deployable Polymer Reflectors for Small Satellite Applications

The paper is a summary of activities in the ESA project Advanced Multilayer Adaptive Thin Shells (AMATS). RFQ/3-17686/22/NL/RA/va. The goal is the development of an actively controlled reflector using piezoelectric polymer materials. The reflector can be folded, deployed, and finally actively controlled. A metrology system for the measurement of petal-shaped reflectors has been developed based on the Software Configurable Optical Testing System (SCOTS) and verified with raytracing. The SCOTS method is also used to verify the thermal balancing of coupon samples produced by MateriaNova. Finally, numerical viscoelastic simulation is conducted to characterize the expected deployment errors of the reflector.