Design, construction and validation of an articulated solar panel for CubeSats

Abstract: The aim of the project was an attempt to design a solar panel for CubeSats
to address the increasing power requirements. Therefore solution options
for the realization of the various subsystems – mechanisms, solar cells and
materials – were collected and analyzed. This included mechanisms for
actuation, guidance, damping, release and control aspects. In order to
maximize the power output from a specific solar cell, simulations about the
influence of the sun-incident angle were performed. The difference in
energy generation between body-fixed panels and articulated panels in one
degree of freedom is in the range of 2 to 3. However, the improvements by
articulating in two degrees of freedom did not show a big increase in
generated power for the designated orbit in 400 kilometers altitude and 40
degrees of inclination.
The proposed design is based on a small stepper motor incorporated with a
planetary gear-head. The selected material for most of the components was
aluminum to reduce the mass of the system. Afterward, the system was
validated by vibrational and thermal computational analyses. The analysis
showed that some of the components, in particular the attachments of the
mechanism at the satellite, are suggested to be redesigned with steel
instead of the earlier selected aluminum. For future work, the results from
the analyses will be validated by the tests described.