Design and Analysis of a Deployment Mechanism with Clearance Compensation for High Stiffness Missile Wings

The deployment performance of the unfolded wing determines whether the winged missiles can fly normally after being launched, infecting the attack performance of the winged missiles. The paper proposes a new deployment mechanism with clearance eliminator. Based on the slider-crank principle, the proposed deployment mechanism achieves fast and low-impact deployment of the wings. The proposed clearance eliminator with shape memory alloy (SMA) effectively eliminates the clearance of the sliding pair and improves the support stiffness and stability of the deployed wing. The collision characteristics and the clearance elimination are studied for the deployment mechanism. The influence of the collision force on the motion state of the wing during the deployment is analyzed. The static stiffness of the wing under the clearance state and the deformation is analyzed. The dynamic stiffness under the catapult clearance elimination state is modeled based on the fractal geometry and contact stress theory. The relationship between the locking force and the support stiffness is revealed. The kinetic simulation is used to analyze the motion response during the action of the deployment mechanism. Modal analysis, harmonic response analysis, and random vibration analysis were conducted for the whole wings. A prototype was developed to verify the ejection performance of the wing according to the input load characteristics. The dynamic stiffness of the unfolded wings is tested by the fundamental frequency experiments to verify the performance of the clearance elimination assembly. The experimental results show that the designed deployment mechanism with clearance compensation achieves fast ejection and high stiffness retention of the missile wing.