nextgen solar sails
- (2016) New twist on artificial muscles
- Muscles made of nylon
- Fabricating Fishing Line Artificial Muscle at Home
Let’s craft Solar Sails (cheaply & at home)
Bill of materials:
- nylon thread (= fishing line)
- aluminized PET sheet (= emergency Mylar thermal blanket)
- Low Earth Orbit (LEO) - like (~200°C) heat source (= heat gun)
- ???
The final step is to find a way to combine the above 2 ingredients such that a structure can unfold once in LEO and take a “flat enough” shape to reflect Sun rays.
Note that, to be able to survive Space conditions:
- overall weight must be minimized and then so should initial volume (deployed within a Space launcher)
- structure must not outgas: materials should not sublimate nor exert gas (attitude would change, lifespan would shorten)
- LEO insolation temperatures can be utilized as deployment energy
This challenge is offered to College & High School students to devise a way to fit the largest & lighest (& mightiest) Solar Sail they can in the cheapest Cubesat possible, aiming below 100g/m2 (all hardware included).
My take
- tumbleweed-like structure + insolated Nylon muscles to open up parabolic surface
- light but solid “articulations” keep the shape in extension, once Nylon muscles extend it
- Deployable origami with on-demand collapsibility
- auxetic dome
- Nylon muscles pull on the many centroids such that the plane expends into a dome that then stays as such
- Self-assembling material pops into 3D
- github.com/UH-AIM/bistable-auxetic-surface-structures
- Bistable Auxetic Surface Structures (Full Talk for SIGGRAPH 2021)
- Bistable Auxetic Surface Structures (Supplementary Video)
- (2021) Bistable Auxetic Surface Structures