Study on Mechanism and Motion Analysis of Folded Deployable Structure for Space Habitation

In the space habitation program for lunar exploration, it is quite difficult to design and manufacture materials locally. Therefore, the basic approach is to fabricate the materials on Earth, store them in rockets, and deploy and install them on the Moon. The habitation facility must be as compact as possible and have a mechanism with excellent deplorability and storability. The authors have focused on the Ishimatsu fold structure, which features the 3-dimensional folding of thick, rigid columnar structure. When unfolded, the cross section of this structure becomes hexagonal, and 6 surfaces composed by the same mechanism unfold simultaneously to form a prismatic columnar shape with complex shape changes. In this study, we investigated the usefulness of the Ishimatsu fold structure by dividing and expanding each module of the structure. Since each module and actuator can be stored small, they can be reconfigured to create various shapes. In this paper, we analyze the motion and dynamics of the expanded deployable structure, and investigate the power and effective placement of the actuators to enable deployment.