Slit Expandable Longerons for Solar Array Deployment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Deployable structures, such as solar arrays, often require separate booms for deployment, which can be cumbersome and inefficient in terms of packaging and mass usage, especially in constrained environments like spacecraft where power, volume, and mass are limited.
Innovation Solution
The use of expandable longerons with slits that can be adjusted to change their cross-sectional profile, allowing for deployment into larger configurations while maintaining stability in both stowed and deployed states, and optionally incorporating solar cells and supporting structures for efficient energy harvesting.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If separate booms are used for deploying solar arrays, then the structure can be deployed, but the packaging efficiency and mass usage become cumbersome and inefficient
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines the deployment function and structural support function into a single integrated longeron component. The longeron serves both as the structural beam and as the deployment mechanism, eliminating the need for separate booms. This merging resolves the contradiction by maintaining deployment capability while significantly improving packaging efficiency and reducing overall structure complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The longeron is designed as a multi-functional component that simultaneously provides structural support, enables deployment, and serves as part of the solar array framework. This universal design allows a single component to perform multiple functions that traditionally required separate elements, thereby improving packaging efficiency without compromising deployment reliability.
2Reliability
If separate booms are used for deployment, then the solar array can be deployed, but the mass and volume increase
Solution Approach 1:
By merging the boom function into the longeron structure, the patent eliminates redundant mass. The longeron serves as both the structural element and the deployment mechanism, removing the need for separate boom components and their associated mass, thus reducing total system weight while maintaining deployment capability.
3Ease of manufacture
If the longeron cross-sectional profile is fixed, then manufacturing is simpler, but adaptability to different configurations is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The longeron is designed with a variable cross-sectional profile that can dynamically change along its length. This dynamic geometry allows the structure to adapt to different configuration requirements while maintaining manufacturing feasibility through systematic variation of the profile parameters, resolving the contradiction between manufacturing simplicity and configuration flexibility.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent employs parameter changes in the cross-sectional profile dimensions and shape along the longeron length to achieve different structural configurations. By systematically varying geometric parameters, the design achieves adaptability to multiple configurations while maintaining a consistent manufacturing approach, thus resolving the contradiction between ease of manufacture and adaptability.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This solution enables more efficient packaging and deployment of solar arrays and other structures, reducing mass and volume while increasing power capacity, and allows for adjustable configurations to optimize energy collection and structural stability.
Implementation Method 1
an adjustment of the angle between the first and second supporting structures causes deformation of at least one of a cross-sectional profile of the longeron
Data Source
AI summary
Collapsible solar array structures are disclosed that include a collapsible structure and detachable solar array. The solar array can be detached stowed separately from the collapsible structure. The collapsible structure can include a plurality of longerons and/or support structures. Longerons can have a slit along a longitudinal length of the longeron.