High-Expansion-Ratio Deployable Space Structures for Long Duration Space Missions

Many of these effects are linked to a lack of gravity, and the ability to generate artificial gravity with a rotating space structure would eliminate their root cause [6]. [...] Simulation and hardware validation of the HERDS sys- tem. [...] Sec- ond, they lack redundancy, and the failure of a single cable can significantly weaken the structure [14,15]. [...] Thrusters capable of exerting up to 300 N forces are assumed in both compressive and tangential directions, stemming from components used on the ISS [24]. [...] In this section, we describe the combination of the pop-up extending truss — a novel scissor mechanism variant shown in Figure 2 — and the Kresling mechanism, to make high expansion ratio deployable structures (HERDS). [...] A negative displacement measures the compressive stiffness of the cell, and in a different test, a horizontal displacement measures the bending stiffness. The results from these experiments can be seen in Table 3. [...] To ensure it is feasible to build such a system with members that have thickness and not simply from the idealized line model, constraints are applied to link lengths Figure 5. [...] The design’s hierar- chical structure and large part count make a full FEA analysis of the superstructure impractical. [...] The stowed structure packed to a height of 5 cm and achieved a final length of approximately 254 cm, resulting in just over the targeted 50x expansion ratio. [...] E from the University of Pennsylvania in Mechanical Engi- neering in 2017 and Robotics in 2018 respectively.