Optimizing telescope design for X-ray astronomy missions

This project aims at accelerating the structural optimization of X-ray telescope components. The University of Leicester has a strong expertise in X-ray astronomy and collaborates closely with the European Space Agency (ESA). For example, the University of Leicester has developed sophisticated glass optics for the ESA mission BepiColombo, which was launched in October 2018. These glass optics focus X-rays on the telescope's detector, and are mounted on a support structure that must be precisely calibrated to the correct position, while being both lightweight and sufficiently robust to tolerate mechanical stresses due to vibrations during the telescope launch. This was a challenging task that has been overcome with intense efforts.
Support structures of this kind are ubiquitous in X-ray telescopes, but their optimal design depends on the telescope specifics. To accelerate the design process, we will model these 3D-structures using 2D-surfaces, also called thin-shell models, by exploiting the fact that their thickness is very small compared to their volume. Using advanced mathematics, we will use this dimension reduction to achieve faster numerical simulations. Theoretical efforts will be complemented with the development of a high-performance computing software. This software will be used to optimize the design of optics support structures of the X-ray telescopes developed at the University of Leicester.