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AssigneeAerospatiale Societe Nationale Industrielle
InventorsThierry Huiban, Bruno Bailly
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A mechanism for isostatic fitting of a fragile element, such as a mirror, to a support, generally carried on board a spacecraft, is provided. The mechanism includes three identical connecting devices circumferentially distributed around the optical axis of the mirror. Each device has a flexible blade or plate, whose longitudinal axis is preferably oriented in a direction tangential to a circle centered on the optical axis. The cross-section of the flexible blade decreases progressively from a first end fixed to the support to a second end fixed to the mirror, through a deformable member. The deformable member is adapted to flex in order to permit a relative rotation about a radially oriented axis. The fixtures to the support and the mirror are provided by rods operating only in tension and compression.
A mechanism for isostatic fitting of a fragile element to a support, comprising three connecting devices circumferentially distributed about a longitudinal axis of the fragile element, each of the connecting devices comprising a first flexible blade located substantially in a plane tangential to a cylindrical surfaced centered on said longitudinal axis, a first end of the flexible blade being fixed to the support and a second end of the flexible blade being connected to the fragile element by a deformable member, said flexible blade and said deformable member being adapted to flex so as to permit a relative rotation between the fragile element and the support about an axis oriented radially with respect to said longitudinal axis to occur, wherein the flexible blade has a cross-section which decreases from the first end of said blade to the second end of said blade, and the deformable member and said flexible blade are also adapted to substantially prevent relative axial displacement between said fragile element and said support from occurring.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.