Integrated optomechanical analysis

Description

In the development of an optical instrument, the optical system error budgetunderscores the multidisciplinary aspect of the design effort. At the top level, an optical performance goal is specified and a systematic allocation of acceptable errors is typically divided between the design, fabrication, and alignment of the optics along with environmental effects. Environmental effects may be further divided between thermal and structural effects. The ability to determine the thermal and structural effects on the system are therefore fundamental in the design process and critical in the evaluation of design trades during the development of an optical instrument.The emphasis of this tutorial is to present optomechanical modeling techniques to effectively design and analyze high-performance optical systems. The first goal is to discuss thermal and structural modeling methods using finite element analysis to predict the integrity and performance of optical elements and optical support structures. The second goal addresses the process of integrating thermal and structural responses into optical design software packages. Such integrated techniques allow the numerical simulation of optical system performance while including the multidisciplinary aspects of the design process. This leads to shorter design cycles, optimized designs, and models that accurately predict hardware behavior. An example of a detailed finite-element model and the corresponding hardware is shown below for NASA's Earth Observer-1, which was successfully launched in November 2000.