Morphological Design and Mechanical Study of an Integrated Retractable Cable Truss and Reciprocal Structure

This paper proposes a retractable cable-driven reciprocal truss structure consisting of a cable-truss system with sliding cables and a reciprocal truss system. Adjusting the cable lengths in the cable-truss system drives the opening and closing motion, while the reciprocal truss carries the panel dead loads and live loads. The structure exploits the flexibility of cables by replacing multiple independent cables with continuous cables, thereby reducing the number of driving motors. Additionally, the cables are connected to the inner ring nodes of the triangular truss, thereby modifying the support conditions of the truss. This connection reduces the influence of external loads on structural deformation and consequently lowers the self-weight required to resist deformation, thereby helping to maintain structural stability during opening and closing. A finite element model of the structure is established using ANSYS to analyze the influence of different parameters on its mechanical performance, and the closing process is simulated by adjusting the cable lengths. Numerical results show that the proposed structure meets the design requirements.