A novel of spacecraft flexible compartment safe and stable inflatable expansion system with the environmental-friendly fuel.

At present, the inflatable expansion of a flexible compartment of a spacecraft mainly depends on the compressed gas cylinder. However, there are some problems in the technology of compressed gas cylinders, such as large volume, heavy mass and non-environmental protection. In view of the above problems, a new space inflatable deployment system is innovatively proposed in this work. The system mainly includes a gas generating agent formulation with safety, stability, low combustion temperature, slow gas production, environment-friendly and clean, and a gas generator with simple structure, light weight, small volume and a flexible compartment. The gas released from the system is charged into the flexible compartment of the spacecraft smoothly. Then, the spacecraft flexible compartment is used to carry out experiment and the resulting gas was subjected to test. The results show that the main gas produced by the system is clean and nontoxic nitrogen. In addition, the whole expansion process is stable, slow and smooth. It can be seen that the space inflatable deployment system will have a good application in the field of spacecraft. • A novel inflatable expansion system with safety, lightness and high reliability is designed. • A low harmful gas formula is firstly designed with slow combustion rate and stable gas production. • A gas generator with simple structure, light weight and small volume is designed. • The whole process of inflatable expansion is found to be smooth and slow without big fluctuation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]