High-performance thermoplastic materials are one of the main development trends in aerospace industry. They show numerous advantages over conventional carbon-epoxy or carbon-cyanate ester thermoset composites. The most important are ability to work at high temperature, high damage tolerance, ease of forming into complex shapes, chemical and environmental stability. The thermoplastic composites give opportunity to increase production rate comparing to thermoset composites and even metals. Another advantage of thermoplastic composites is their ability to be manufactured using automated methods such as AFP (Automated Fiber Placement), which give opportunity to precisely tailor composite's layup and produce optimized structures such as grid sturcture.

In the presentation authors summarize selected issues related with development of thermoplastic composite structure of small class satellite (mass ~200kg). The project is intended in explore possibility to use thermoplastic composites as base material for serial production of satellites with manufacturing time reduced by 30% comparing to milled aluminum counterparts. The development process covers several issues related to satellite bus structure - effects of LEO environment, mechanical and thermal performance, design of joints and mechanical fasteneres.