Experimental study of inflatable deployment process of folded membrane tubes

There has been a lot of attention recently on space inflatable deployment structures. One of the challenges is to control the dynamic properties of the structures during the inflation and deployment. Inflatable tubes used to deploy and support space structures are a key component for many space inflatable structures. In this paper, an inflation deployment experimental system in equivalent micro gravity environment is established based on air track which evidently avoid disturbance of contact sensor to the inflation deployment process. The impact of dynamic properties from three different kinds of gas flow, variable geometry size and if there is added mass on deployable end. Dispersion of the experimental data is analyzed. The experimental results indicate that the inflation deployment experimental system in equivalent micro gravity environment is feasible and effective. Results also show that deployment velocities of the folded tube are a function of the tube diameter, gas flow, and the added mass on the deployable end.