Numerical and Experimental Analysis of Deployable Thin-Walled All-Composite Space Construction

Advanced deployable space reflectors are widely used for radio-communication and Earth remote sensing. The increase of reflector aperture imposes increasingly strict requirements on its mass, storage volume and stowage ratios. Among other types of deployable reflectors, space truss reflector can be marked as low weight, low storage volume and high stowage ratio solution. However, reflectors of this type have several drawbacks, like high manufacturing and adjustment complexity, large amount of movable parts and low magnitudes of first eigenfrequencies. In current paper, the new deployable space construction design possibly appropriate for reflector is proposed that possesses all the advantages of space truss reflectors while reducing structural complexity and price, rising low eigenfrequencies and guaranteeing needed deployed shape. The proposed design is a space truss made of foldable composite rods with thin-walled collapsible cross-section. The design structural integrity allows the manufacturing of reflector as a single part made of carbon fiber reinforced plastics with high specific strength and stiffness as well as low thermal expansion, thus providing necessary rigidity and stability of the structure in wide temperature range. All-composite design will additionally reduce the mass and will allow to avoid composite-metal joining issues.

References

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