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Updated: Jun 29, 2025

Experimental Implementation of a New Composite Fabrication Method: Exposing Bare Fibers on the Composite Surface by the Soft Layer Method
Published on: October 6, 2017
Long-span fiber composite truss made by coreless filament winding for large-scale satellite structural systems
Pascal Mindermann1, Denis Acker2,3, Robert Wegner2
1Institute for Textile and Fiber Technologies, University of Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 9, 70569, Stuttgart, Germany. pascal.mindermann@itft.uni-stuttgart.de.
Abstract:
Climate change necessitates exploring innovative geoengineering solutions to mitigate its effects-one such solution is deploying planetary sunshade satellites at Sun-Earth Lagrange point 1 to regulate solar radiation on Earth directly. However, such long-span space structures present unique technical challenges, particularly structural scalability, on-orbit manufacturing, and in-situ resource utilization. This paper proposes a structural concept for the sunshade's foil support system and derives from that a component-level modular system for long-span fiber composite lightweight trusses using coreless filament winding. Within a laboratory-scale case study, the component scalability, as well as the manufacturing and material impacts, were experimentally investigated by bending deflection testing. Based on these experimental results, FE models of the proposed structural concept were calibrated to estimate the maximum displacement and mass of the foil support structure, while comparing the influences of foil edge length, orbital load case, and material selection.
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