Investigation of mechanical behaviors of spoke-wheel cable structures through experimental and numerical analysis driven by digital-twin

Abstract

Ascertaining the mechanical behaviors of large-scale space structures (e.g. spoke-wheel cable structure) is essential for guaranteeing their structural safety. This study proposed a digital-twin (DT)-based method for analyzing the mechanical behaviors of spoke-wheel cable structures. A spoke-wheel cable structure with a span of 6 m was used as a case study to validate the proposed method. The structural behaviors, such as cable forces and structural displacements under five loading conditions (i.e. dead load and dead load plus 3/10, 5/10, 8/10 or full-areal live load), were investigated experimentally and numerically. A comparative analysis was conducted to compare the results using the proposed method with the traditional method. Results show that the proposed DT method could help to update geometric details and boundary conditions of the twin model for ensuring effective numerical analysis. Moreover, the changing trends of general force for the same type of cables were basically the same under different loading conditions. Besides, the forces of upper spoke cables and inner-ring decreased under the action of live load, whereas the forces of lower spoke cables and inner-ring increased. The displacement directions of loaded and unloaded nodes were downward and upward, respectively, when subjected to uneven live loads. In addition, the vertical displacements of the outer nodes were greater than thoseof the inner ones. Furthermore, the cable forces and displacements of the structure changed more obviously under the action of asymmetric load. The established high-fidelity DT model could support effective numerical analysis of mechanical behaviors of large-scale space structures.