Dynamic characteristics of multifunctional structure for spacecraft

The minimum cost is an important aspect of the spacecraft design. A proposed approach is the multifunctional structure technology, which fully integrates subassemblies and performs both structural and other functions for spacecraft. By combining the structural and functional subsystems into a single unit, the mass and volume savings can be realized. In order to investigate the dynamical properties of the multifunctional structure, which contains viscoelastic components, sine-sweep tests and random vibrations are carried out in present paper. The experimental results show that the multifunctional structure could survive the vibration environment. The first resonance frequency decreases with increment of the testing levels, and the base frequency of the multifunctional structure is larger than 100 Hz for all tested loading cases, meeting the frequency requirement for most spacecraft platforms. The multifunctional structure in this paper has successfully combined the structural and battery function, indicating potential for future lightweight and cost-saving spacecraft application.