September 16, 2024

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Speaker: Othman Oudghiri-Idrissi, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin

Host: Brandon Jones

Title: On the design of In-Space Manufacturable Large, Lightweight, and High-Precision Structures

Abstract: Novel design concepts of in-space manufacturable spacecraft that break free from the conventional launch loads and deployability limitations are presented. The spacecraft is designed to be mass-efficient, stable, and resilient with high precision. To this end, different mechanical metamaterial concepts are deployed to enhance stiffness, structural damping, and robustness to damage, namely dissipative metamaterial beams and creased thin plates. In effect, we numerically and experimentally demonstrate that the creasing of a flat plate considerably increases its stiffness with a minimal mass cost. Further, we design, optimize, and experimentally validate mass-efficient and highly stiff dissipative metamaterial structural elements that employ viscoelastic materials to induce and enhance structural damping. We integrate the different metamaterial technological solutions into designing a large 1 MW solar array made of a creased plate supported via a lightweight viscoelastic metamaterial truss. We numerically demonstrate that creasing the panels supporting the solar cells enhances its precision by a factor of four. Finally, we test a lab-scale mock-up of the solar array design via experimental modal analysis in air and vacuum and demonstrate that the dissipative metamaterial beams enhance its structural damping by a factor of two. Hence, it is concluded that high mass efficiency and spatiotemporal precision are achievable with the proposed design of the 3D-printable solar array. The developed metamaterial technologies can serve in designing spacecraft that require similar or higher precision and resiliency, such as sun shields, thermal radiators, radio frequency antennas, and optical telescopes. The design approach and metamaterial concepts can also be deployed toward the design and in-space assembly and manufacturing of the lunar infrastructure.

Biography: Dr. Othman Oudghiri-Idrissi is an Assistant Professor in the Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Oudghiri-Idrissi’s research interest spans various fields, including in-space assembly and manufacturing (ISAM), mechanical metamaterials, wave mechanics, homogenization, and inverse problems. He co-led the DARPA NOM4D project during his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, where he contributed to the development of novel metamaterial-based designs for large, lightweight, and high-precision space solar arrays and radio frequency antennas. At UT Austin, his current research focuses on designing and developing in-space manufacturable structures, particularly for the lunar infrastructure. Dr. Oudghiri-Idrissi earned a Diploma in Civil Engineering (Diplôme d’Ingénieur) from the Hassania School of Public Works, Morocco, and an M.Sc. in Geotechnical Engineering from École des Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, France, in 2016. He received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, in 2022.