Additively Manufactured Structured Fabrics for Deployable Antenna Structures

The 2017-2027 Decadal Survey for Earth Science and Applications from Space outlines the need for high frequency antenna capabilities for use with CubeSat constellations to aid Earth science objectives. Current technologies such as mesh reflectors and reflectarrays are insufficient for the higher frequency applications, necessitating a novel antenna architecture with solid surfaces. Additionally, due to launch volume restrictions, deployable antenna structures are required to maximize the aperture size for a given stowage volume. Structured fabrics are continuums of interacting elementary particles or unit cells (e.g. chainmail is made of interlocking links). Such fabrics are conformable in the relaxed state but become rigidized when the particles interlock/jam in response to an external stimulus. In this talk, we will discuss the development of a deployable reflector antenna based on structured fabric technology. The particle geometry and spatial distribution were computationally designed optimized for specific fold lines which allows for a solid surface paraboloid upon actuation. The structured fabrics were fabricated using additive manufacturing due to the complexity and customization of each particle.