Rapidly Deployable Lightweight Shelters for Austere Environments

There is a need for developing a new generation of lightweight, rapidly deployable semi-permanent infrastructure to support the Armys transition to a Modular Force. Existing metal frame and airbeam designs, notwithstanding their many innovations, fail to take full advantage of the weight savings possible with a stressed skin approach to tent structure. In current designs, loads from wind and snow are carried principally by rigid frame elements, and the canopy acts as little more than a weather barrier. A stressed skin design will achieve the desired weight and performance improvements by distributing load stresses throughout the canopy and frame, so that all components mechanically work together, reducing the bulk and mass of each element. NEMO Equipment, Inc., with a ten year history of developing high performance and commercially successful pole and airbeam supported tents and shelters, will develop three new stressed skin shelter designs. For these 400 square feet and larger shelters, the action of pre-stressing the frame elements and tensioning the canopy, whether by inflatable elements or a distributed network of lightweight flexible poles connected to the shelter skin, will be engineered with mechanical assistance to be performed in a matter of minutes by only one or two people.