A LARGE DEPLOYABLE HEXAPOD PARABOLOID ANTENNA

Deployable structures are increasingly interested for engineers in the aerospace field. A deployable hexapod truss is developed for space application in this paper. The most significant feature is no mechanism to be locked during the deployment, compared with previous varied deployable units. It’s packaging ratio is shown to be good too. A large paraboloid truss antenna is designed by using the deployable hexapod truss, the geometric condition and structural precision are also studied. An aluminium alloy model is made in the last two years. The details of the movable parts, such as diagonal retractable bars and initial perturbation constructions are intruduced in detail in this paper. It is proved by numerical results of structure analysis that the stiffness of antenna is high enough for space application.