Thermostructural Analysis of the SOFIA Fine Field and Wide Field Imagers Subjected to Convective Thermal Shock

The originally designed SOFIA aircraft configuration included a system to pre-cool the telescope cavity on the ground before flight, however, due to various factors in the history of the project that system was not installed. This lack of ground pre-cooling was thus the source of the concern over whether or not the imagers would be exposed to a potentially unsafe thermostructural environment when the telescope cavity door was opened at altitude. This concern was in addition to the already existing concern that the air temperature rate of change during flight (both at the same altitude as well as ascent or descent) could cause the imagers to be exposed to an unsafe thermostructural environment. Four optical components were identified as the components of concern - two of higher concern (one in each imager) and two of lower concern (one in each imager). The requirement was to perform transient, coupled thermostructural analyses to determine whether the stress would ever achieve unsafe levels in these components. The analysis effort began by analyzing one component, after which the analyses for the other components was deemed unnecessary.