Technologies > Thin Film Control > Shape

More recent representative experimental results using boundary control to clean up most symmetrical Zernike distortion content of a variety of 0.5 m diameter test surface is illustrated in below. Nearly an order of magnitude of improvement in shell shape was achieved and performance was close to the predictions. Further improvement with discrete boundary control is currently limited by the spherical aberration inherent to the current shell fabrication process. Improvements to the fabrication process currently being investigated are expected to further reduce spherical aberration content by several orders of magnitude. Additional details about the test methods and results are provided by Hall et al (2005).

Predicted and experimental active control figure improvements for a 0.5 m OD form stiffened shell