Kinematic Synthesis of Deployable-Foldable Truss Structures Using Graph Theory, Part 1: Graph Generation

Abstract

Kinematic structural synthesis has been relatively successful when applied to the conceptual design of mechanisms. The approach presented in this paper, however, views the design process from an initial standpoint of a truss structure. First, graphs are generated that represent truss structures with a given number of nodes and links. Each graph is then modified by designating certain edges in the graph to represent links in the structure that incorporate additional degrees of freedom. In so doing, the graph of a structure is transformed into one representing a mechanism. A procedure is presented that enables the exhaustive generation of these graphs for deployable structures of any given number of nodes and links. From these graphs, it is then possible to obtain enumerable novel deployable truss structures as well as those that have been reported in the literature.