Space structures operate in extreme environments — vacuum, thermal cycling, launch vibration, and microgravity — and must be lightweight yet highly flexible. We apply advanced finite element formulations, particularly the Absolute Nodal Coordinate Formulation (ANCF), to capture the large-deformation dynamics that dominate the behaviour of deployable booms, solar arrays, and thin-walled aerospace structures.
Deployable structures — booms, reflectors, solar sails — must fold compactly for launch and reliably deploy in orbit. Tensegrities offer a compelling structural paradigm: lightweight, stiff, and deployable. We have developed the mathematics of stable tensegrity configurations and apply these to the design and analysis of space-deployable systems.
Composite materials are ubiquitous in aerospace — combining high stiffness and strength with low weight. Thin-walled open-section composite beams appear in aircraft spars, wind turbine blades, and launch vehicle structures. We apply variational asymptotic methods to derive dimensionally reduced models that retain the accuracy of 3D analysis at a fraction of the computational cost.