Electronic housings and spacecraft panels based on multifunctional lightweight structures

The needs to reduce cost and provide added value by integration of functions is demanding for a weight and volume constrained design on aircraft and satellite. On the last years, lightweight composite materials have been increasingly used to reduce the structural weight and volume of equipment components. However, concentrating solely on structural mass reduction does not lead to further lowering of equipment mass because the structure typically represents as little as 10 to 15. In the conventional spacecraft structures and avionics equipment design, structural, thermal and electronic functions are generally designed and fabricated into separate elements: - Load support based on shells and metallic frames structures - Thermal management based on radiators or cold plates - Electronics enclosures based on metallic black boxes and rigid PCB - Electronic/power distribution based on Cables bundles/harness. These functions intend to be integrated under the MSF design, consisting in structural composite panels and composite housings that have electric (patch within flexible integrated circuits mounted directly on the composite panel) and thermal properties (heat transfer elements embedded on the composite panel as thermal doublers and straps made of high conductive graphite fibres or alternatively active thermal integrated refrigeration circuits as fluid loops). The MULFUN project objective is the development of lightweight - fully integrated advanced equipment for spacecraft (structural panels and electronic housings) based on these multifunctional structures with disruptive design concepts. Four breadboard have been designed and manufactured. Two composite panels have tested the concept of passive (high conductive graphite fibers) and active (mini heat pipes) thermal dissipaters integrated to transfer the heat produced by the electronic circuit embedded on the panel. Afterwards, a design of a phase array antenna has been used to demonstrate the scale up of composite panels with thermal dissipaters integrated and to assess the flexible electronics. Finally a breadboard of power electronic housing has been designed and manufactured to test complex shapes of composite panels and integration of both electronics and thermal on the composite. Promising results and important mass savings (up to 65).