Design and Test of a Modified Passive Orbital Disconnect Strut (PODS-IV)

Passive Orbital Disconnect Struts (PODS) can potentially reduce the support conductance a factor of 10 over state-of-the-art tension band nondisconnect supports and can significantly reduce helium dewar weights without reducing lifetime. A series of thermal and structural tests have demonstrated this performance improvement. The major shortcoming of the PODS-III design is lack of side-load resistance to thermal shorting. This paper describes a design modification (PODS-IV) that dramatically increases the side-load resistance to shorting without significantly degrading thermal performance.