Control of optical systems

Some of the current and planned activities at the Air Force Systems Command in structures and controls for optical-type systems are summarized. Many of the activities are contracted to industry; one task is an in-house program which includes a hardware test program. The objective of the in-house program, referred to as the Aluminum Beam Expander Structure (ABES), is to address issues involved in on-orbit system identification. The structure, which appears similar to the LDR backup structure, is about 35 feet tall. The activity to date has been limited to acquisition of about 250 hours of test data. About 30 hours of data per excitation force is gathered in order to obtain sufficient data for a good statistical estimate of the structural parameters. The development of an Integrated Structural Modeling (ISM) computer program is being done by Boeing Aerospace Company. The objective of the contracted effort is to develop a combined optics, structures, thermal, controls, and multibody dynamics simulation code.