Design And Analysis Of A Solar Sail Deployable Mechanism

In recent years,deep space exploration technology has attracted great attention from all over the world.The emergence of solar sail makes it possible to reduce the cost of deep space exploration.Solar sail is a spacecraft which can use sun light for interplanetary flight,it is also a kind of sustainable space power system.Because massive chemical fuel and work medium is not needed in the navigation process,the solar sail is widely used in deep space exploration mission and the space mission in which the common spacecraft is difficult to accomplish.The key to the success of the solar sail task is whether the sail can be smoothly unfolded,The development process of the sail surface and the final development state are closely related to the design of the solar sail deployment mechanism.So the design and optimization of solar sail deployment mechanism is an important part of the whole system design.Deployable mechanism has important application value in aerospace field.With the rapid development of deep space exploration technology,the application of solar sail spacecraft in space mission has been increasing.But the solar sail is largely limited by the expansion of the area,the expansion of the form,the quality of the launch and so on.And the research of solar sail deployable mechanism can effectively solve these problems.In this paper,a solar sail deployable mechanism with simple structure,small mass,large shrinkage ratio and high stability is designed,besides,the finite element analysis and optimization are carried out,involved in mechatronics,engineering,mechanics,materials,controlling and so on.This paper describes from the following several respects mainly:(1)Firstly,the mechanism of solar sail deployable mechanism and related theoretical bssis are revealed.According to the mission requirements,the vortex winding way is determined,also,the combination,storage mode and traction mode of boom and sail are designed.Regarding to the problem of drum package,synchronous design,tension design and a new boom are proposed.Then combined with geometric nonlinearity and finite element theory,the stiffness of booms is compared and analyzed.(2)Secondly,the overall structure of the program and the specific implementation of the form are designed.According to the design goal,the design parameters are determined.The whole system can be divided into three parts:supporting and deployable mechanism,storage structure and wireless control module.(3)Thirdly,related designs of boom and sail are studied.The boom is improved,then static analysis and numerical analysis of five booms are carried out to verify the application of the new boom.According to the harm of crease,numerical analysis on three kinds of folding methods are finished,furthermore,the crease index is put forward and the best way to fold is determined.(4)Once more,the modal analysis of solar sail deployable mechanism is studied.Natural frequencies and modes of vibration are determined.The structural design and vibration stability can be evaluated by means of the overall modal analysis,so the structure can be optimized further.(5)Lastly,the principle prototype is builded,then the expansion test of booms,cable control expansion test and wireless control expansion test are carried out.The rationality of the design can be verified by the experiment.