Paper
22 July 2014 Wheel drives for large telescopes: save the cost and keep the performance over hydrostatic bearings
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
The use of steel wheels on steel tracks has been around since steel was invented, and before that it was iron wheels on iron tracks. Not to be made obsolete by the passage of time, this approach for moving large objects is still valid, even optimal, but the detailed techniques for achieving high performance and long life have been much improved. The use of wheel-and-track designs has been very popular in radio astronomy for the largest of the large radio telescopes (RT), including such notables as the 305m Arecibo RT, the 100m telescopes at Effelsberg, Germany (at 3600 tonnes) and the Robert C. Byrd, Greenbank Telescope (GBT, 7600 tonnes) at Greenbank, West Virginia. Of course, the 76m Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank is the grandfather of all large aperture radio telescopes that use wheel drives. Smaller sizes include NRAO’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) telescopes at 25m and others. Wheel drives have also been used on large radars of significance such as the 410 tonne Ground Based Radar-Prototype (GBR-P) and the 150 foot (45.7m) Altair Radar, and the 2130 tonne Sea Based X-Band Radar (SBX). There are also many examples of wheel driven communications antennas of 18 meters and larger. All of these instruments have one thing in common: they all use steel wheels that run in a circle on one or more flat, level, steel tracks.

This paper covers issues related to designing for wheel driven systems. The intent is for managing motion to sub arc-second levels, and for this purpose it is primary for the designer to manage measurement and alignment errors, and to establish repeatability through dimensional control, structural and drive stiffness management, adjustability and error management. In a practical sense, there are very few, if any, fabricators that can machine structural and drive components to sufficiently small decimal places to matter. In fact, coming within 2-3 orders of magnitude of the precision needed is about the best that can be expected. Further, it is incumbent on the design team to develop the servo control system features, correction algorithms and structural features in concert with each other. Telescope designers are generally adept at many of these practices, so the scope of this paper is not that, but is limited to those items that pertain to a precision wheel driven system.
© (2014) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Marvin F. Campbell "Wheel drives for large telescopes: save the cost and keep the performance over hydrostatic bearings", Proc. SPIE 9145, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes V, 91452H (22 July 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2056624
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KEYWORDS
Servomechanisms

Telescopes

Control systems

Antennas

Optical instrument design

Computer programming

Radar

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