Packaging and deployment of large shell structures by internal pressure loading

The packaging of large composite shell structures (corrugation, a cylinder and a truncated cone) and their deployment by internal pressure loading are explored. It is believed that the medial surfaces of the constituent elements have involutes which coincide with them in a packed state. The corrugation consists of the ring components, the cylinder and cone consist of trapezoidal plane components. These components are made of carbon fiber with orthotropic or transversely isotropic elastic properties and stapled by joints. The joints do not perceive resistance to rotation about the tangent to the weld line. The contemplated structures perceive bending loads (unlike pneumatic ones) made of soft materials (fabrics, films). Geometrically nonlinear solid mechanics problems with the internal pressure loading are solved by using the engineering computing system ANSYS. The deployment pressure dependence on the shell material structure, shell thickness and amount of constituent elements are investigated. It is shown that the deployment pressure of the large shell is commensurate with the pressure of pneumatic structures of soft materials. It was found that the stresses in the corrugation shells can reach critical values but in the cylinder and the truncated cone the stresses are insignificant. The task formulation and its solution on the thermodynamic state of the injected gas under quasi-static internal pressure loading of the shell are suggested. It is shown that in the beginning of deployment the gas temperature will drop by about 50-80 degrees Celsius according to gas composition, and then its temperature is tending to increase to the injected gas temperature. These results enable to expand the choice of materials for the pneumatic products manufacturing including space applications design.