STRUCTURAL DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF A DEPLOYABLE VEHICLE SHELTER WITH HYBRID FRP COMPOSITES AND ALUMINUM

As a movable workspace, a deployable vehicle shelter has the advantages of easy transportation, good environmental adaptability, convenient maneuverability and large expansion space. Therefore, it has been widely applied in engineering rescue, medical security, living reserve, building, tourism and other fields. This paper aims to design the structure of a lightweight shelter assembly whose deployable mechanism is proposed for multi-level deployable vehicle shelter and whose steel frame and outer panel are replaced by aluminum and Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) composites to reduce the weight of shelter. Additionally, the structural strength and stiffness are analyzed by the finite element method (FEM) under typical operation loads, such as bending, torsion, hard brake, turn, as well as modal analysis. This study could contribute to the knowledge for the lightweight design and engineering application of deployable vehicle shelters.