Propulsion, energy collection, communication or habitation in space requires ever larger space structures for theexploration of our solar system and beyond. Due to the payload size restrictions of the current launch vehicles,deployable structures are the way to go to launch very large structures into orbit. This paper therefore presents thedesign and simulation of a tensegrity based structure with inflatable rigidizable tubes as compression struts. Theliterature review showed that inflatable structures are most promising for the development of deployable reflectorslarger than twenty meters in diameter. Good compression performance and reliability can be achieved by employingrigidisable inflatable tubes. The concept presented in this paper will focus on the development and simulation of aone meter diameter hexagonal reflector substructure that can be easily expanded to larger diameters due to itsmodular design. The one meter diameter modular approach was chosen to be able to build a full size benchmarkmodel to validate the numerical data in the future. Due to the fact that the tensegrity compression elements are notinitiating at one specific location, a passive reaction gas inflation technique is proposed which makes the structureindependent of any pumps or other active inflation devices. This paper will discuss the use of inflatable rigidizableelements and their counteraction with the rest of the tensegrity structure. Simulations have been undertaken tocapture the deployment behaviour of the inflating tube while getting perturbated by the attached tensegrity tensioncables. These simulations showed that the use of inflatable rigidisable struts in tensegrity assemblies can greatlydecrease the system mass and stowed volume, especially for very large reflectors compared to conventionalapproaches.
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