Abstract
With the increasing demand for large-scale space structures, such as solar power satellites and space telescopes, new deployment mechanisms are needed to improve the construction efficiency and simplify the maintenance in orbit as well. A self-propagation chain structure, which consists of bistable units, is considered as a potential choice for deployable structures recently.
A self-propagation chain structure is proposed, and it is applied to the deployable need of the radial rib antenna. Firstly, a curved rib comprising bistable units in series is designed to realize the shape transformation from the folded (curved) state into the deployed (straight) one. Then, the kinematics and dynamics equations governing the motion are derived to investigate the propagation mechanism. The influence of structural parameters of each unit to the deploying process are studied comprehensively. Finally, a deployable radial rib antenna driven by a self-deployed mechanism is realized by utilizing the spiral chain as the rib. The results demonstrate that the proposed deployable structure has the advantages to preserve the deployment stability and shape accuracy. This work provides a novel idea to design the deployable structures with self-propagating mechanism in space.
