A Novel Concentrator Design for OMEGA Wireless Power Transmission System

This paper proposes an umbrella-type foldable concentrator for the Orb-shape Membrane Energy Gathering Array (OMEGA) space solar power station. This design is inspired by the umbrella-like collapsible antenna and is used to achieve a lightweight and highly stowable OMEGA space solar power station. This concentrator is composed of a rigid reflective surface intercepted from the center of the spherical crown and a thin film reflective surface formed by several curved ribs. The analysis of axial error indicates that reducing the concentrator aperture and the number of ribs results in a smaller axial root mean square error. To achieve the required precision of 3.6-5.4 mm, the minimum of 48 ribs is necessary. The number of ribs was reduced to 12 to improve deployment reliability. The solar array profile was optimized to compensate for the error. A crank-like slider mechanism was designed to achieve simultaneous deployment of the array and the thin-film reflective surface. Modal analysis was performed on the concentrator to obtain the inherent frequency required for the design. The resonant frequency of the concentrator can meet the design requirements.