Bibcode
Farah, Alejandro; Godoy, Javier; Velazquez, F.; Espejo, Carlos; Cuevas, Salvador; Bringas, Vicente; Manzo, A.; del Llano, L.; Sanchez, J. L.; Chavoya, Armando; Devaney, Nicholas; Castro, Javier; Cavaller, Luis
Bibliographical reference
Large Ground-based Telescopes. Edited by Oschmann, Jacobus M.; Stepp, Larry M. Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 4837, pp. 317-324 (2003).
Advertised on:
2
2003
Citations
1
Refereed citations
0
Description
Under a contract with the GRANTECAN, the Commissioning Instrument (CI)
is a project developed by a team of Mexican scientists and engineers
from the Instrumentation Department of the Astronomy Institute at the
UNAM and the CIDESI Engineering Center. The CI will verify the Gran
Telescopio Canarias (GTC) performance during the commissioning phase
between First Light and Day One. The design phase is now completed and
the project is currently in the manufacturing phase. The CI main goal is
to measure the telescope image quality. To obtain a stable high
resolution image, the mechanical structures should be as rigid as
possible. This paper describes the several steps of the conceptual
design and the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) for the CI mechanical
structures. A variety of models were proposed. The FEA was useful to
evaluate the displacements, shape modes, weight, and thermal expansions
of each model. A set of indicators were compared with decision matrixes.
The best performance models were subjected to a re-optimization stage.
By applying the same decision method, a CI Structure Model was proposed.
The FEA results complied with all the instruments specifications.
Displacements values and vibration frequencies are reported.