AN EXPLORATORY RESEARCH ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF DEPLOYABLE SPHERICAL SHELTER

Abstract

An exploratory research on a deployable geodesic sphere for a personal shelter that provides final measure to protect oneself in extreme emergencies is reported. C.Gantes has shown that it is possible to make geodesic hemispheres deployable when elastic bending deformation is allowed to the scissors members. The hemisphere has two stable states, one is in the folded configuration and the other is in the unfolded. The authors have successfully extrapolated the same approach to find the possibility of constructing a full sphere, rather than a hemisphere. The paper describes the detail of the approach, model and some numerical results.