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Talks and Poster Presentations (with Proceedings-Entry):

B. Sommer, S. Häuplik-Meusburger, M. Aguzzi:
"Inflatable Technologies - from Dream to Reality";
Talk: International Conference on Textile Composites and Inflatable Structures, Barcelona (invited); 09-17-2007 - 09-19-2007; in: "Textile Composites and Inflatable Structures III", CIMNE (International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering), Textile Composites and Inflatable Structures/ III /Barcelona, Spain (2007), ISBN: 978-84-96736-30-6; 147 - 150.



English abstract:
With the increasing investment in a sustained human presence beyond low-earth orbit, the interest in the development of lightweight structures comes to the fore again.

Lieghtweight structural concepts can include inflatable, erectable or deployable parts utilizing membranes, composites or hybrid concepts. These structures clearly offer great advantages for space stations and also for building habitats and associated infrastructure on the Moon and Mars. By applying intelligent constructive and packing concepts, they are particularly interesting because they combine mayimum load capacity and minimum use of material with the increase of operational and habitable volume.

In addition to the structural advantages, lightweight and adaptable structural concepts can be one of the most important strategies to assist a sustainable space exploration development. With the term adaptable structural concepts we refer to the ability to adapt to changed requirements e.g. of mission objectives, crew condition and technological developments.

This paer presents a selection of past and current innovative developments of lightweight and adaptable architectural concepts - beyond the focus on deployability, thus allowing for the development of innovative building structures underlining the features through detailed discussion and examples.

Keywords:
Inflatables, Transformability, Adaptability, Sustainability

Created from the Publication Database of the Vienna University of Technology.