Structural Comparison of Scissor-hinge Linkages

Deployable structures can deploy from a compact to an expanded configuration by
changing their sizes. The behaviors of these structures depend on some parameters such as geometric
shape, member sizes and kinematic properties. To provide the deployment, not only the
arrangements of structural members but also some restrictions must be considered. Moreover,
contiguous members of the structures must let the large rotations to provide the transformation
between different geometric forms from fully folded to fully deployed configurations. These requirements
have an important impact on the fundamental properties of the structures related with
structural performance, such as stiffness and strength. In this paper, stiffness of different scissorhinge
linkages are analyzed and compared. These linkages cover the same span with almost the
same geometry and have the unit elements with same size and same weight. However, the geometry
of unit elements is different from each other. The paper investigates the effect of this difference
on the stiffness of whole system.