Mechanical behavior of elastic telescopic rods for morphing scissor structures

Abstract

Morphing structures with simultaneous deployable and load-bearing characteristics have become the research hotspot due to their practicability. For morphing deployable structures with these requirements, geometrical incompatibility will occur due to the design or the additional loads during the transformation. In order to solve the problem effectively, a novel elastic telescopic rod is designed for suitable axial stiffness and bending deformation capacity. The mechanical behavior is systematically investigated for scissor structures based on the experiments and simulations in this paper. The core parts of the proposed telescopic rods are the springs, constrained sliding tubes and outer steel tube jacket. According to the symmetry of springs and steel tube jackets, three types of elastic telescopic rods are put forward. And their load modes are clarified as the coupling action of axial displacement and concentrated vertical loads. Experiments and simulations are carried out to evaluate their mechanical performance in normal and ultimate use states. The bearing capacity and deformation capacity of the same specimen with different initial axial displacements and different types of specimens are compared. This principle may be able to open a new avenue for the design of morphing scissor structures with load bearing capacity and transformability, and it will unfold their use in architecture and civil engineering.