Eiichi Sato1, Satoshi Sawai1, Kenjiro Uesugi1, Tsuyoshi Takami2, Katsumi Furukawa2, Masao Kamada2, Makoto Kondō3
1Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
2Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.
3Muroran Institute of Technology
Tóm tắt
Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS/JAXA) in collaboration with
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) has developed fuel and gas tanks for reaction control system and
orbital control system of satellites; A tank is fabricated through welding of two thin, hemi-spherical or
conical parts, which are fabricated by superplastic blow forming. Mass-productivity is not an
important factor but the forming precision and flexibiliry in the process are important for this
application. ISAS and MHI, therefore, developed a new blow-forming technique, which has high
flexibility in terms of tank size because it requires a furnace but not a hot-press machine. Some typical
propulsion tanks fabricated through this process are presented.
