Folding and Deployment of a New Thin-Walled Tube Flexible Hinge

摘要

A new thin-walled tube flexible hinge with six slots is proposed. The slot geometry is parameterized in terms of slot width, length and distance between two adjacent slots. The experiment for tension test of the thin-walled tube hinge with six-slots is conducted by INSTRON and the tensile stress-strain curve is measured. Finite element analysis to investigate the quasi-static folding and deployment of the new hinges by ABAQUS/Explicit solver are employed to perform a series of parameter studies for the slots longitude length l_0, the slot width w and the distance d between two adjacent slots.