Qualification process of additive manufactured attachment Supports for the Space Rider Body Flap Assembly

The paper describes the progress in the development, manufacturing and qualification of the Support Attachments of the Body Flaps Assembly (BFA) of the ESA funded SPACE RIDER re-entry vehicle, involving innovative Additive Layer Manufacturing (ALM) techniques.

The SPACE RIDER program aims to define and to develop an affordable reusable European space transportation system to be launched by the ESA VEGA-C launcher and able to perform experimentation and demonstration of multiple future application missions in low Earth orbit. The proposed BFA design is based on a hybrid approach: Ceramic Matrix Composite (CMC) control surfaces capable to withstand the harsh environment of re-entry combined with high temperature metallic components allowing the connection of the control surfaces to the cold structure.

In particular, these support attachments have been designed as Ti6Al4V components and due to their geometrical complexity manufactured by using ALM technique.

The paper describes the ALM technology used, that is the Electron Beam Melting (EBM) process, and it is focused on the development activities for the qualification of ALM process and of the components for space applications according to ESA ECSS standards.