Investigation of Shape Retention of Inflatable Structures Based on Experiments and Fluid-Structure Interaction Analysis

Abstract

Inflatable structures are widely used in aerospace engineering. They should keep a certain configuration in service, and their mechanical properties are closely related to their configurations. It is essential to investigate the ability of maintaining configuration of inflatable structures in order to study their mechanical properties . The concept of shape retention was first proposed in this paper. Besides, a shape retention index which quantitatively depicts the concept was given for inflatable column structures. The index takes compressive deformation and compression force into account. It is demonstrated that the shape retention increases with the increase of the modulus of the membrane and the inner pressure of inflatable structures.