Lightweight Inflatable Structural Airlock (LISA)

Innovative low cost, light-weight airlock technologies are required to integrate with deep space and surface platform hosting Extra-Vehicular Activity. CFDRC team proposes an inflatable airlock structure that employs unique fabric architecture capable of delivering the lowest mass and greatest versatility of any competing design. The proposed design features a completely integrated air beam inter-wall to passively generate the wall stiffness required for airlock depressurization?without the mass and bulk of aluminum pressure hulls or complexity of multi-structure adaptations of competing inflatable habitat architectures. This unique architecture utilizes a matrix of braided fiber tendons to contain the structure?s global pressure loads. The underlying woven fabric and gas barrier envelopes are thereby only exposed to minimal local shell loads where they bulge outwards between adjacent tendons. Working in pure tension in the absence of load coupling, the tendon array architecture has been shown to be statically determinate and auto-stabilizing under extreme deflection. The proposed airlock stows compactly for transport to the habitat further reducing logistic costs. Phase I effort focused on conceptual design of the airlock system, identification and evaluation of candidate materials, and characterization of the airlock system. Phase II effort will focus on design refinement, integrated testing, analysis, and integration plan that will culminate in the fabrication and demonstration of a subscale prototype inflatable airlock structure.

Successful completion of this SBIR effort will result in the development of a lightweight fabric inflatable airlock structure for advanced space exploration missions that protect habitable environments and reduce operational and logistical overhead. This system will have immediate application in expanding the utility of any human space exploration architecture while benefiting from system cost and payload volume reduction. The proposed technology will find direct application within many NASA missions, programs and projects including projects associated with NASA Evolvable Mars Campaign, STMD Minimalistic Advanced Softgood Hatch (MASH) project, Exploration Augmentation Module (EAM), and deep space inflatable habitat. Other NASA applications include planetary surface habitats, large-scale space hangars for on-orbit assembly, design and analysis of space-based inflatable structures such as telescopes, inflatable aerodynamic decelerators, antenna reflectors, cryogenic propellant tanks, debris shields, rescue vehicles, and barometric chambers.

Non-NASA commercial applications include many potential venues including underwater habitats, deep sea emergency escape systems (submarine), portable storage tanks for oil transport, high altitude air ships, aerostats, compressed air energy storage, remote fuel depot stations, remote water storage tanks for forest fire control, deep space antenna reflectors for ground stations, antenna radomes, emergency shelters, and troop shelters with integrated ballistic protection.

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