ESA Open Invitation to Tender: 1-10811
Open Date: 25/05/2021 12:48 CEST
Closing Date: 06/07/2021 13:00 CEST

The activity intends to exploit advanced manufacturing technologies to build tribology-free mechanism based on compliant structures.Compliant mechanisms are used where high accuracy and small motion ranges are required. They are tribology-free: the absence of backlash and friction noise allows to obtain high performance in position stability and repeatability. The state of the art of the production technologies employs Wire Electrical-Discharge Machining (WEDM) or other traditional machining (milling, grinding). These methods impose strong limitations on the shapes that can be obtained, and hence prevent the realization of architectures that would allow better performances. At the same time, the assembly of the final mechanism can become very complex. Additive Manufacturing can solve many of the problems mentioned above. Combined with design techniques based on topology optimization, it offers much wider design possibilities in terms of kinematic architectures, shapes of thin section and material properties. The potential performance improvements are: increase motion range, increase of stiffness in constrained degree-of-freedom (DoF) and decrease along actuated DoF, mass reduction, assembly simplification, extension of lifetime.This activity will investigate compliant mechanism architectures able to realize complex motion functions such as multi-DoF guidance (e.g. hexapods, tripods), motion transformation (e.g. rotation-to-translation conversion) and elastic actuation (e.g. spring actuated deployment).

Directorate: Directorate of Tech, Eng. Quality
Estabilishment: ESTEC
ECOS Required: No
Classified: No
Price Range: 200-500 KEURO
Contracts Officer: Ilaria Di Benedetto
Initiating Service: TEC-MSM
IP Measure: N/A
Prog. Reference: E/0901-01 – Technology Developme
Tender Type: Open Competition
Open To Tenderers From: AT+BE+CH+CZ+DE+DK+EE+EL+ES+FI+FR+GB+HU+IE+IT+LU+NL+NO+PL+PT+RO+SE
Technology Keywords: 7-A-II-Reflector and Lens Antennas / 13-C-III-Motion and Actuation / 15-A-V-Guiding Technologies / 16-B-IV-Optical Bench and Mounting Technologies / 21-D-III-Radiators
Products Keywords: 2-D-1-a-Deployment (SADM, SADE,…) / 2-D-1-c-Instrument specific mechanisms / 2-D-1-d-Scanning / 2-D-1-e-Solar Array Drive Mechanisms (SADMs) / 2-D-1-f-Thrusters orientation (EPPM,…)