The most immediate opportunity for the tools that will be developed under this SBIR is to assist NASA and its contractors in performing design trade studies of large mass-efficient deployable solar array systems. The tools will allow rapid trade studies of these systems to be carried out so that designs can be optimized for critical performance requirements such as deployment reliability, stiffness, strength, control, etc. The tools can also be easily extended and/or customized to allow design and analysis of other hardware of interest to NASA, including lightweight booms, frames, and expandable/inflatable structures. Products that will leverage these hardware elements include space fuel stations, manned outposts on the moon or Mars, and robotic exploration vehicles.
The tools will have broader applications than just the design and optimization of deployable solar array structures. The development of the toolset will focus on developing a modular, open-architecture tool that is easily extensible and customizable to integrate with other systems, software tools, and architectures. The underlying architecture of the toolset allows it to be easily expanded and/or customized to enable additional analysis solutions, geometry modules, control systems, interactions, and terminology relevant to a vast array of other products. This framework results in a powerful tool for design and analysis of any product that has several disparate components that must work in an integrated way. Products may include heavy equipment, robotics, industrial manufacturing, spacecraft, aircraft, automotive, and energy applications, to name but a few.
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