Case Study: Comat Aerospace validates 3POD antenna pointing design with MSC Software

Developing the 3POD Antenna Pointing System

Comat Aerospace is developing the 3POD Antenna Pointing System with CNES and needed to make sure the antenna could stay pointed at ground stations while keeping mechanical jitter low. For its first planned deployment on the OTOS satellite, the system had to provide a 74o pointing domain with worst case pointing precision of +/- 1o at about 5o per second. The parallel robot design was promising, but Comat Aerospace needed to study its kinematics carefully to avoid collisions and singularities.

Using MSC Software’s SimXpert and Adams, Comat Aerospace modeled the robot with flexible elements and explored the full range of motion to identify risky positions. The team found a rigid singularity in the initial design, modified the structure to remove the weakness, and validated new iterations without introducing new singularities. MSC Software helped Comat Aerospace reduce the design-and-validation loop to about 4 hours, about one-fifth of the previous time.

Comat Aerospace

Lauren Bernabe

Project Engineer