The Design Of Rotating Flexible Hinges And Research On Driving Of Deployable Mechanisms

With the continuous development of the aerospace industry,more and more large-scale in-orbit mechanisms have been applied in aerospace engineering.However,due to the limitation of the internal volume of the rocket and the size problem,the unfolding mechanisms usually cannot be directly transported into space.As a result,various types of deployable mechanisms have been widely used in aerospace engineering.While traditional deployable mechanisms are used in space,they need electrical machinery and other equipment to provide power.Also,the deployable mechanisms require additional locking mechanisms to maintain stable,which lead to the deployable mechanisms complex and massive.Flexible hinges were designed suitable for the space deployable mechanism,which can simultaneously have both power and locking functions.In order to obtain flexible hinges that can be used in space deployable mechanisms,a double-decked rotary flexible hinge is designed by using the double-decked rings as the outer frame,and using the modular method to combine the curved panel and the long thin plate as flexible units.The theoretical model of the rotational stiffness and radial displacement areestablished based on the pseudo rigid body method.The finite element simulation model is established in ANSYS software to verify the correctness of the theoretical model.Two kinds of flexible hinges are designed based on the double-decked rotary flexible hinge with the tape spring was introduced as a flexible unit.The static analysis of the tape spring in the hinges is carried out in ABAQUS software to verify the feasibility of the design.Then the quasi-static simulation analysis of the folding and unfolding process of the joints was carried out in the Explicit of ABAQUS,and the torque variation curve during the folding and unfolding process was obtained.Finally,the experimental scheme was designed to test the torque during the unfolding process and the anti-interference ability of the joint under steady state conditions,which further verified the advantages of the complaint joints.Based on the proposed tape spring flexible hinges,common planar triangle and planar rectangular deployable mechanisms are analyzed.Two kinds of deployable mechanisms' dynamics models are established in ADAMS software to simulate the unfolding process of the mechanisms.A space deployable mechanism is designed and simulated in ADAMS software.A plurality of spatial folding mechanism units are connected to form a large cylindrical space mechanism with a folding function.This paper has made research on the theory,simulation and experimentabout the design of flexible hinges with driving and locking functions,and application of the space deployable mechanisms.The tape spring flexible hinges that can be used in the space folding mechanisms were proposed and analyzed.The dynamics simulation of the mechanisms were completed to achieve the unfolding and locking.