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Structural Design And Analysis Of A Rigidizable Space Shuttle Experiment, Raymond G. Holstein Iii
Structural Design And Analysis Of A Rigidizable Space Shuttle Experiment, Raymond G. Holstein Iii
Theses and Dissertations
AFIT is in the process of designing a Space Shuttle experiment designated as the Rigidized Inflatable Get-Away-Special Experiment (RIGEX) to study the effects of microgravity on the deployment of rigidizable composite structures. Once in space, the experiment will inflate and rigidize three composite structures and perform a vibration analysis on each by exciting the tubes using piezoelectric patches and collecting data via an accelerometer. This paper presents the structural and vibration analysis of the RIGEX assembly and inflatable composite tubes using ABAQUS Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software. Comparison of the analysis has been carried out with Eigenvalue/Eigenvector experimentation by means …