Paper
18 August 2005 Optical performance assessment under environmental and mechanical perturbations in large, deployable telescopes
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Abstract
Prediction of optical performance for large, deployable telescopes under environmental conditions and mechanical disturbances is a crucial part of the design verification process of such instruments for all phases of design and operation: ground testing, commissioning, and on-orbit operation. A Structural-Thermal-Optical-Performance (STOP) analysis methodology is often created that integrates the output of one analysis with the input of another. The integration of thermal environment predictions with structural models is relatively well understood, while the integration of structural deformation results into optical analysis/design software is less straightforward. A Matlab toolbox has been created that effectively integrates the predictions of mechanical deformations on optical elements generated by, for example, finite element analysis, and computes optical path differences for the distorted prescription. The engine of the toolbox is the real ray-tracing algorithm that allows the optical surfaces to be defined in a single, global coordinate system thereby allowing automatic alignment of the mechanical coordinate system with the optical coordinate system. Therefore, the physical location of the optical surfaces is identical in the optical prescription and the finite element model. The application of rigid body displacements to optical surfaces, however, is more general than for use solely in STOP analysis, such as the analysis of misalignments during the commissioning process. Furthermore, all the functionality of Matlab is available for optimization and control. Since this is a new tool for use on flight programs, it has been verified against CODE V. The toolbox' functionality, to date, is described, verification results are presented, and, as an example of its utility, results of a thermal distortion analysis are presented using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) prescription.
© (2005) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Christopher Folley and Allen Bronowicki "Optical performance assessment under environmental and mechanical perturbations in large, deployable telescopes", Proc. SPIE 5867, Optical Modeling and Performance Predictions II, 58670N (18 August 2005); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.617504
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KEYWORDS
Code v

James Webb Space Telescope

Mirrors

Distortion

Geometrical optics

MATLAB

Finite element methods

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