VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF

DEPLOYABLE STRUCTURES

N
CONTENT

 ABSTRACT

 INTRODUCTION
ABSTRACT
 Deployable structures capable of being packaged into a small volume to be deployed on orbit to full
size have been widely utilized on aerospace vehicles. vibrations of the structure are stimulated by
means of hammer impact method.
 The Constant-Q non-stationary Gabor frame transform and Fourier transform are employed to
analyze the corresponding vibration properties. As the experimental results shown:
 The damping will become greater along with the vibration frequencies increasing.
 The vibration of the outer panel tend to be more random, so the effect of the clearance is stronger
for the outer panel.
 vibration energy in folded situation is spreaded, which indicates that the effect of the clearance is
stronger in the folded situation.
INTRODUCTION

 Space deployable mechanisms have been widely employed in aerospace

vehicles, due to an ability to improve space utility rates
 Long, deployable booms are basic building elements of a variety of ultra-light-
weight space inflatable structures, such as the Next Generation Space Telescope
(NGST), the Inflatable Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR), solar arrays, and
reflectors
 In recent years, several types of boom structures for space applications have been
developed
 This work is concerned with modeling and vibration analysis of a boom that is
composed of several long beams constrained or enhanced by springs.
 Such a boom can be packed in a small volume and deployed into an upright
configuration, and thus is a suitable candidate for future NASA missions involving
space inflatable structures.
• A frame component is a prismatic member sustaining bending, longitudinal and torsional
deformations
• Where u is the longitudinal displacement, v and w are the transverse displacements, and θ is the
rotation or twist. these displacements are functions of time t and the local coordinate x. it is
assumed that the cross section of the component is symmetric with respect to y and z axes. for the
bending (transverse) deformation, euler-bernoulli beam model is used. thus, the differential
equations of motion of a frame component are given by :-

where ρ, e, g and a are the linear density (mass per unit length), young’s modules, shear modulus
and beam cross-section area of the beam, respectively; j is the polar moment of inertia; Iyand Iz are
moment of inertia with respective the y and z axes, respectively; x p , y p and z p are external loads
per unit length in the x, y and z directions; and t m is the external torque.
An enhancing spring is connected to two nodes of the frame structure; see fig. 2. As such, the
Spring exerts forces at the nodes according to the nodal displacements

Where k is the spring coefficient, ui and uj are the displacement vectors at nodes i and j,
Respectively, and es is a unit vector indicating the orientation of the spring.
Fig. 2 A spring attached to nodes i and j
Modeling and Solution by DTFM

A DTFM synthesis of the boom structure is presented. The synthesis takes

four main steps:
(i) Derivation of distributed transfer functions of frame members;
(ii) Derivation of dynamic stiffness matrices of frame members;
(iii) Assemblage of a global dynamic equilibrium equation; and
(iv) Determination of the dynamic response and free vibration solution.
These steps are detailed in sequel.
THE EXPERIMENT DEVICES
In order to obtain the vibration properties of a certain type of deployable structure, a
small-scale model array, loosely based on a type of retractable rigid array, is manufactured
to conduct the testing experiment, and it is shown in figure 1. besides, the size diagram of
the model array is shown in figure 2. it consists of inner and outer steel panel, connected
by a pair of cylinder hinge, and the shaft sleeves of the revolute pairs are made of brass.

figure 1 – the experimental model: (a) cylinder hinge, (b) folded, (c) unfolded

The size of the two panels are approximately 300×150×2.5mm. the material of the
steering king pin 45#steel, with diameters 7.96mm，7.8mm and 7.2 mm, so the radius of
the corresponding clearances are 0.02mm, 0.1 mm and 0.40 mm, and the standard
tolerance is 0.02mm. and the whole model is fixed in foundation bed by a cylinder hinge.
Boom Model
 The boom in consideration can be viewed as a frame structure. In
civil engineering, frame structures are normally analyzed by the
finite element method (FEM)
 Due to the large number of elements involved in a finite element
analysis and the need for model reduction in feedback control of
boom structures, analytical modeling and solution techniques are
desirable
 This method delivers exact closed-form Eigen solutions, and naturally
formulates a boom for control system design.
 The deployable boom in consideration is modeled as a space
frame that has springs attached it nodes for stiffness enhancement
The signal collection devices
 The schematic diagram of the testing system is illustrated in Figure 3. To obtain
the vibration signal of the folded and deployed model array, a rubber hammer is
used to knock on the array, and then two pressure acceleration senores are
employed to collect the acceleration of the vibration of the inner panel and the
outer panel, while the impact force produced by the rubber is collected by a
piezoelectric pressure sensor. After that two signals are filtered and amplified
by a charge amplifier, and are, finally, transmitted to a digital collection device.
EXPERIMENT RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

 To guarantee to fully obtain the vibration behavior of the model, the experiment
consist of two sections, and they are as follows:
 (1) impact forces are acted on inner panel or outer panel;
 (2) the deployable structure are in different working situation (folded and
unfolded). The experiment results and corresponding analysis will be presented
in following chapter.
Vibration collection positions and knocking positions in the inner panel or
the outer panel

 Vibration characters of the inner panel and outer panels are different. To catch
the change, the experiments are designed as follows: when the model is
unfolded, drub the model array in the point D, and collect vibration signal in the
points B and E (the point B is the mass center of inner panel, its vibration
characteristic is very representative for the inner panel, and the same to the point
E and the outer panel.).
Different working situations (unfolded and
folded)
 To obtain the vibration characteristics of the deployable structure at different work situation , a
targeted test is taken as an example to carried out, and as follows: The signal collection position is
on E point, and knocking position is on D point, which is conducted as the model panel is folded
and unfolded.
 The knocking direction and the vibration direction are also along the Y axis. The FFT spectrum of
the signal are shown in Figure 8.
 As can be seen in Figure 8, in contrast to deployed state, vibration energy in the folded situation is
in a more dispersed distribution, which indicates that a more serious wide-frequency phenomenon
occur in the folded situation than at the unfolded situation, which reveals that the effect of the
clearance is stronger in the folded situation.
 For a quantitative analysis, we calculate the standard deviation of the two Fourier spectrums show
in Figure 8, and the value of the inner panel is 5.18×10-7 ,and the value of the outer panel is
2.11×10-7, which also prove this phenomenon.
Conclusion
 In order to investigate vibration properties of the rigid deployable structure, a model array is made, loosely based
on a certain type of solar cell array, to conduct hammer impact test.
 The CQT based on nonstationary Gabor frame is introduced to study the time-frequency distribution
characteristics of the vibrations, and Fourier transform is used to analyze the frequency distribution characteristics.
 The experiment is conducted. In the experiment, the signal collection position and the working state for the
time-frequency properties of the vibration signals are analyzed, and the experiment results seem to suggest
following conclusions:
(1) The damping will become greater along with the vibration frequencies increasing, which is proved by the
experiment results that the greater vibration frequency is, the shorter the corresponding vibration time is.
(2) The vibration of the outer panel tend to be more random, which indicate that the effect of the clearance is
stronger for the outer panel.
(3) In contrast to deployed state, vibration energy in folded situation is in more dispersed distribution , which
indicate that the effect of the clearance is stronger in the folded situation .
 The conclusions above may be helpful to study the dynamic performance of this type of deployable structures.
 In this paper, qualitative researches are done for the vibration properties of the deployable structure. Estimation of
dynamic parameters of the model array such as damping, stiffness and other dynamic parameters, are further
researching focuses.
Resorces

1) www.slideshare.com
2) www.sciencedirect.com
3) www.Wikipedia.com

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5) E.A. Thornton, D.B. Paul. Thermal-Structural Analysis of Large Space Structures: An
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