Development of electro active polymers configurations to monitor and control deployable space structures

In the framework of the ESA funded project EAP (Electro Active Polymers) an international team of universities and companies led by Kayser Italia Srl has studied and developed applications of EAP to investigate the possibility to monitor and control inflatable and deployable lightweight space structures. Different configurations of EAP have been studied and developed aiming at damping the vibrations of a long inflated-rigidized boom and at the shaping of reflector like structures. Novel configurations of electro-active polymers have been designed and manufactured with the aim of testing their capabilities on breadboards which are representative of space structures. The work on the development and characterization of the EAP configurations is presented first along with experimental data and simulations run with models purposely developed. Secondly the breadboards used to test the capabilities of the configurations are presented and explained. A section is dedicated to the modelling and simulation of the configurations and the breadboards because it represents a rather important part of this project. Lastly the experimental results of the performance test are presented and discussed.