April 18, 2005

Two of CSA’s engineers will present papers at this year’s American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Structures, Structural Dynamics and Materials (SDM) conference, and related conferences in Austin, Texas.

In “Design and Evaluation of a Reinforced Advanced-Grid Stiffened Composite Structure,” Adam Biskner will describe a lightweight composite structure for the Minotaur launch vehicle, major possible failure modes, and methods for achieving higher failure loads.

In “Shape Memory Alloy Deployment of Membrane Mirrors for Spaceborne Telescopes,” Eric Pollard will talk about his research that developed and refined a shape memory alloy (SMA) modeling approach to predict the transient response of a spaceborne membrane optic SMA deployment actuator spine system. Technology addressed through this research is intended to foster and mature successive large, launch-packaged space vehicle programs.