COMPUTATIONAL DESIGN OF BISTABLE DEPLOYABLE SCISSOR STRUCTURES: TRENDS AND CHALLENGES

Mobile deployable scissor structures are transportable and can be transformed rapidly from a compact folded state offering a huge volume expansion. Intended geometrical incompatibilities during transformation can be introduced as a design strategy to obtain bistability, which allows instantaneously achieving some structural stability in the deployed state. In such bistable deployable structures, these incompatibilities result in the elastic bending of some specific members that are under compression with a controlled snap-through behaviour. Attempts to optimally design deployable bistable structures remain scarce, since the underlying structuralmechanical concepts are complex. Furthermore, the requirement of flexibility during deployment while ensuring some structural stability in the deployed state prevents the use of simple design methodologies relying on the structural behaviour under service loads only. In this contribution, the trends and challenges of using computational tools in the structural analysis and design process of deployable bistable structures are discussed. Computational tools are crucial for the geometrical and structural design, for the definition of a rigorous design methodology and for a deeper understanding of the complex transformation behaviour of these structures.