A Self-Deployable Pyramidal Truss Based on Water-Drop Buckling

This paper proposes a self-deployable pyramid truss based on water-drop buckling. By bending the straight beams of the pyramid truss into water-drop shapes, elastic potential energy is stored and released upon the removal of constraints, enabling the compressed structure to deploy rapidly and autonomously. Through multi-circle bending of the beam edges and multi-cell design of the pyramids, a higher folding ratio and larger structural size are achieved. Analytical calculations, numerical simulations, and physical experiments are conducted for both the water-drop buckling and pyramidal truss deployment. The comparison results demonstrate the correctness of the calculation method and the effectiveness of the self-deployable design.