Active and Passive Joints for Damping Augmentation of Large Space Structures

This paper discusses the development and analysis of improved joints for large space structures. The joints are designed so that the normal force to a frictional interface is varied yielding a connecting joint with increased damping performance without significantly increasing the structure´s weight or complexity. A single-degree-of-freedom joint and a system consisting of two elastic beams connected by a single active/passive joint are considered. It is shown that these new joint designs are able to enhance the energy dissipation from LSS in a relatively simple and robust way. Numerical simulation results are presented and discussed.