A general method to synthesize customizable-stiffness triangular-prism deployable arms

The increasing complexity and diversity of aerospace missions have resulted in the need for deployable arms with high load-bearing capacity and structural stiffness. High stiffness ensures the stability and reliability of a structure in environments with extreme temperatures and microgravity while effectively mitigating vibration during missions. In this study, an approach to synthesize customizable-stiffness triangular-prism deployable arms (TPDAs) is proposed. The synthesis approach achieves high structural stiffness during the configuration synthesis phase. First, deployable unit graphs are generated from statically determinate truss structures on the basis of graph theory, leading to the development of a deployable unit configuration library for TPDAs. Second, a general equivalent stiffness model is formulated for deployable unit configurations on the basis of equivalent beam theory. This model ensures that the stiffness of all configurations in the library can be determined efficiently, and that the stiffness model and configuration synthesis methods can be combined for the design of customized stiffness. Last, a configuration is selected from the deployable unit configuration library as an example to construct a TPDA and conduct prototype experiments. The presented synthesis method is able to analyze the configuration stiffness in the configuration synthesis stage and meets the requirements for high stiffness in TPDAs.