TY - JOUR
T1 - Electrothermally Driven Reconfiguration of Microrobotic Beam Structures for the ChipSail System
AU - Xie, Kecai
AU - Li, Chengyang
AU - Sun, Shouyu
AU - Nam, Chang Yong
AU - Shi, Yong
AU - Wang, Haipeng
AU - Duan, Wu
AU - Ren, Zhongjing
AU - Yan, Peng
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 by the authors.
PY - 2023/4
Y1 - 2023/4
N2 - Solar sailing enables efficient propellant-free attitude adjustment and orbital maneuvers of solar sail spacecraft with high area-to-mass ratios. However, the heavy supporting mass for large solar sails inevitably leads to low area-to-mass ratios. Inspired by chip-scale satellites, a chip-scale solar sail system named ChipSail, consisting of microrobotic solar sails and a chip-scale satellite, was proposed in this work. The structural design and reconfigurable mechanisms of an electrothermally driven microrobotic solar sail made of Al\Ni50Ti50 bilayer beams were introduced, and the theoretical model of its electro-thermo-mechanical behaviors was established. The analytical solutions to the out-of-plane deformation of the solar sail structure appeared to be in good agreement with the finite element analysis (FEA) results. A representative prototype of such solar sail structures was fabricated on silicon wafers using surface and bulk microfabrication, followed by an in-situ experiment of its reconfigurable property under controlled electrothermal actuation. The experimental results demonstrated significant electro-thermo-mechanical deformation of such microrobotic bilayer solar sails, showing great potential in the development of the ChipSail system. Analytical solutions to the electro-thermo-mechanical model, as well as the fabrication process and characterization techniques, provided a rapid performance evaluation and optimization of such microrobotic bilayer solar sails for the ChipSail.
AB - Solar sailing enables efficient propellant-free attitude adjustment and orbital maneuvers of solar sail spacecraft with high area-to-mass ratios. However, the heavy supporting mass for large solar sails inevitably leads to low area-to-mass ratios. Inspired by chip-scale satellites, a chip-scale solar sail system named ChipSail, consisting of microrobotic solar sails and a chip-scale satellite, was proposed in this work. The structural design and reconfigurable mechanisms of an electrothermally driven microrobotic solar sail made of Al\Ni50Ti50 bilayer beams were introduced, and the theoretical model of its electro-thermo-mechanical behaviors was established. The analytical solutions to the out-of-plane deformation of the solar sail structure appeared to be in good agreement with the finite element analysis (FEA) results. A representative prototype of such solar sail structures was fabricated on silicon wafers using surface and bulk microfabrication, followed by an in-situ experiment of its reconfigurable property under controlled electrothermal actuation. The experimental results demonstrated significant electro-thermo-mechanical deformation of such microrobotic bilayer solar sails, showing great potential in the development of the ChipSail system. Analytical solutions to the electro-thermo-mechanical model, as well as the fabrication process and characterization techniques, provided a rapid performance evaluation and optimization of such microrobotic bilayer solar sails for the ChipSail.
KW - ChipSails
KW - bilayer beam
KW - chip-scale satellite
KW - electrothermal reconfiguration
KW - solar sail spacecraft
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U2 - 10.3390/mi14040831
DO - 10.3390/mi14040831
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85156089228
VL - 14
JO - Micromachines
JF - Micromachines
IS - 4
M1 - 831
ER -