Design & analysis for the configuration of a radially foldable wheel

Referring to the contradiction between the performance requirement of the vehicles and the limited payload bay space in the process of the aerospace launching, a kind of mechanism of the radially foldable wheel is presented. On the basis of the analysis for the composition principle of the wheel, topological synthetical analysis for the mechanism of the wheel which consists of the configuration decomposition and the configuration synthesis is carried out. The topological transformation is analyzed, and the three types of the exterior connection of rim-chain-links are discussed in category as the rim-chain-links of the wheel is considered a unit configuration. The configuration of the wheel is verified to be true through analyzing the configuration to confirm the mobility, which provides the theory condition for the application of the mechanism in the aerospace.