Foam Inflated Rigidized Truss Structure Developed for an SRS Technologies Solar Concentrator

A foam inflated rigidized (KR) truss structure to support a single chamber solar concentrator has been developed and demonstrated. This technology promises to advance the state of the art in construction of lightweight, deployable solar concentrators for solar thermal propulsion applications. In this paper the design, analysis, deployment and integration of this structure are discussed. A KR structure is a rigid composite tube that can be formed in space by inflating a resin impregnated fabric skin with a solvent swollen polymeric foam. Once inflated, the skin resin is cured using the available ultraviolet radiation. By using high strength and stiffness fiber materials, a stiff, strong, lightweight structure is produced (Lester, 1994).