Abstract
The Shanghai 65 m radio telescope is currently the largest full range rotatable radio telescope in Asia. Gravity, wind and temperature are the three main factors which may have a bad effect on the reflector’s surface precision. To study the effect of the thermal deformation caused by daily non-uniform temperature fields on the surface precision of the main reflector, both the temperature field and its effect were studied in detail for two typical days (January 15th and July 15th). The method to simulate temperature fields was studied initially, considering heat conduction, solar radiation, shadowing, air convection, sky radiation and ground radiation. Then, an integral parametric thermal finite element model (FEM) of the telescope was established using the ANSYS thermal analysis module. Finally, the effect of non-uniform temperature fields on the surface precision of the main reflector was estimated in terms of the Root Mean Square (RMS) deformation based on temperature transient analysis. The proposed methods and conclusions drawn can provide valuable information for thermal design, thermal monitoring and thermal control of the Shanghai 65 m radio telescope and other similar giant antenna structures.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ambrosini, R., Grueff, G., and Tofani, G. (1996). A feasibility study for the 64 meters, active surface sardinia radio telescope. In Large Antennas in Radio Astronomy, pp. 91.
Bejan, A. and Tsatsaronis, G. (1996). Thermal design and optimization. John Wiley & Sons.
Borovkov, A. I., Shevchenko, D. V., Gimmelman, V. G., Machuev, Y. I., and Gaev, A. V. (2003). “Finite element modeling and thermal analysis of the RT-70 radio telescope main reflector.” Proc. International Conference on Antenna Theory and Techniques, Sevastopol, Ukraine, pp. 651.
Bremer, M. and Greve, A. (2011). A dynamic thermal model for design and control of an 800-element open-air radio telescope. In: Integrated Modeling of Complex Optomechanical Systems. International Society for Optics and Photonics, pp. 83360U-83360U-10.
Bremer, M. and Penalver, J. (2002). “FE model-based interpretation of telescope temperature variations.” In Workshop on Integrated Modeling of Telescopes, International Society for Optics and Photonics, pp. 186–195.
Elbadry, M. and Ghali, A. (1983). “Temperature variations in concrete bridges.” Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE, 109(10), pp. 2355–2374.
Fan, F. (2010). Mechanical analysis report on Shanghai 65m radio telescope structure. Space Structure Research Center of Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China (in Chinese).
Greve, A. and Bremer, M. (2010). Thermal design and thermal behaviour of radio telescopes and their enclosures. Springer Science & Business Media.
Greve, A., Bremer, M., Penalver, J., Raffin, P., and Morris, D. (2005). “Improvement of the IRAM 30-m telescope from temperature measurements and finite-element calculations.” Antennas and Propagation, IEEE Transactions on, 53(2), pp. 851–860.
Jin, X. F. (2010). Study of key issues of the structural safety and accuracy control of the five-hundred-meter aperture radio telescope. Doctoral thesis, Harbin Institute of Technology (in Chinese).
Jin, X. F., Fan, F., and Shen, S. Z. (2008). “Effect of nonuniform temperature field under sunshine on the structure supporting the reflector of a large radio telescope-FAST.” China Civil Engineering Journal, 41(11), pp. 71–77 (in Chinese).
Liu, G. Z. and Zheng, Y. P. (2009). Report on design of Shanghai 65m antenna structure. CET54, Shijiazhuang, China (in Chinese).
Qian, H. L., Liu, Y., Fan, F., Fu, L., and Liu, G. X. (2012). “The analysis on solar radiation of Shanghai 65 m radio telescope.” Engineering Mechanics, 29(10), pp. 378–384 (in Chinese).
Reddy, J. N. and Gartling, D. K. (2010). The finite element method in heat transfer and fluid dynamics. CRC press.
Shen, Z. Q. (2013). “Shanghai 65m radio telescope.” Science, 65(3), pp. 7 (in Chinese).
Siegel, R. and Howell, J. R. (1993). Thermal radiation heat transfer. 3rd revised and enlarged edition, Hemisphere Publishing Corp., Washington, pp. 980–1037.
Wang, C. Y. (2012). Numerical simulation study on characteristics of wind loads of huge radio telescope. Master thesis, Harbin Institute of Technology, pp. 80–85 (in Chinese).
Zuhairy, A. A. and Sayigh, A. A. M. (1995). “Simulation and modeling of solar radiation in Saudi Arabia.” Renewable Energy, 6(2), pp. 107–118.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Qian, H., Chen, D., Fan, F. et al. Evaluation of solar temperature field under different wind speeds for Shanghai 65 m radio telescope. Int J Steel Struct 16, 383–393 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13296-016-6011-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13296-016-6011-3