Design And Research Of Bio-inspired Inflatable Deployment Structure

Deployable structures, as an important kind of structure, have been widely used ina variety of satellite antennas and space reflectors. The deployable structures also havea wide range of applications in the military field. Under the size and cost limitations oftransportation system, deployable structure usually requires large contraction ratio andhigh reliability, therefore, development of deployable structures faces a series oftheoretical and technical challenges.Bionics provides a new concept to develop the deployable structures. This is anew design method for the deployable structure, and it is a new research field forbionics. The design method of new bionic deployment structure needs extensive andin-depth study of the original structure. At the same time, the expansion mechanismand configuration must be considered. Some historical experience which is the bionicssuccessfully applied on other research fields can be used in this theory. There areplenty of insects in nature, but the butterfly’s eclosion expansion has a uniquecharacteristic. According to the butterfly wings eclosion development process, how todesign a new type of deployable structure is presented in this thesis. The research workmainly includes the following three aspects:(1) Research on the eclosion and development process of butterfly. According tothe research, the butterfly eclosion development is divided into two phases. The firstphase is inside pupae development. The formation of veins which is in the butterflywings is completed in this process. The second phase is outside pupae development.This process spends less time compared with the first process. With the liquidinflowing into the wings through veins, the wings expend gradually. It is this processthat provides biological principles for bionic deployable structure’s design.(2) According to the characteristics of butterfly wings, the simulation model ofdeployable structure is established. The K file is exported after meshing the simulation model and finite element pre-processing. Some parameters can be modified throughcalculating in the K file. The simulation results can be obtained be solver. Thesimulation results show that this structure can deploy smoothly, and the expansionprocess is steadily. Therefore, a prototype model is fabricated and some experimentsare also carried out.(3) Aiming at the deficiency of the prototype, the topological optimization methodis choosed to optimize this structrure. So, the other prototype which has much betterstructural property is presented in this paper. The final configuration of this structure isdetermined by the finite element analysis and inflatable experiment of the prototype iscompleted. The feasibility of the bio-inspired inflatable deployment structure is provedby the experimental verification.