Design And Analysis Of A New Type Of Hinge For Deployable Structures

A tape spring with a shape of steel spring has a configuration of ringent cylinder shell. It has special buckling properties. We can design a new kind of hinge using this special buckling properties. This new kind of hinge has unique mechanics and it is both self-powered and self-latching, so there is no need of additional power and lock equipment. This kind of new hinge can be used in large deployable structures such as solar arrays .This paper has a detailed analysis of a single tape spring's buckling properties ,critical moment ,strain energy and resilience. It also discusses how the geometry issues affect the unfolding ability of the single tape spring.It has the deep research of some important problems such as the control of single tape spring's bending area, the value of single tape spring's unfolding moment and the yielding of the single tape spring. It gives the measures for controlling the bending area and the measures for avoiding the yielding of the single tape spring. It also gives the formula of unfolding moment of single spring.The design and analysis of combined hinge are conceived in this paper. It also involve the compare of the mechanics between the combined hinge and single tape spring.It has the analysis of the unfolding of the solar array driven by combined hinges.It also presents the making of the solar array model and the experiments of unfolding . At last it gives the advantage and limitation of the combined hinge and the betterment measures.