Structural
instabilities
In-space manufacturing and assembly
Active structures
Check out our SpaceFlight Mechanics Episode
Prof. Royer talks about the present and future of space structures, including deployables, in-space manufacturing and assembly, and the role structural mechanics research can play in creating game-changing spacecraft concepts!
News
New paper on structural instabilities experiments!
Our work on "Experimentally probing the stability of thin-shell structures under pure bending" just got published in a special edition of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A! We developed a unique imperfection insensitive testing apparatus which allows to unveil complex shell stability features which were hitherto inaccessible experimentally. More details
AIAA SciTech 2023: new paper and presentation
Prof. Royer presented our work on Electrostatically Actuated Thin-Shell Space Structures at AIAA SciTech 2023. We developed new deployable active structures which can be used in high precision space application and in-space manufacturing and assembly schemes. Find the paper here.
New paper on numerical analysis of instabilities!
Our paper Probing the stability of thin-shell space structures under bending is out in the International Journal of Solids and Structures! We numerically "poke" a structure at multiple locations to understand how it is likely to buckle, and understand its complex stability near the theoretical buckling point. More details