Ultralight Coilable Structures
Sergio Pellegrino
Engineering and Applied Science, California Institute of Technology
Pellegrino and his team are developing ultralight, plate-like, square spacecraft for solar power satellites. Each satellite consists of a central element, four deployable booms supporting diagonal cords, and a series of strips parallel to the sides of the square, connected to four diagonal cords. The strips are ladder-like structures consisting of thin-shell longerons connected by transverse elements, supporting multifunctional “tiles” consisting of photovoltaic and RF elements. This whole assembly can be elastically folded into a star configuration and then tightly coiled around the hub. Proof-of-concept physical models of this structure have been built, and it has been demonstrated that these complex structures fold and deploy in a repeatable way under the action of simple constraints. Future applications of these structures will require upscaling of this structural concept to tens of meters, posing new challenges for the design of thin shell structures.
