Folding patterns for ultra-thin deployable membranes

Abstract

A deployable structure should mainly be adequately compact and should fit into any remaining space of the launch vehicle. The main factors which will determine these are the folding pattern, ease of deployment and stresses in the fold lines. Two folding patterns are selected based on extensive literature review to investigate the possibility of using those techniques for a large solar sail mission. It is expensive as well as extremely time consuming to perform experimental investigation under reduced gravity environment for this type of large membranes. Thus developing simulating techniques are quite important. Two models are simulated using Abaqus/Explicit commercial finite element software. Quasistatic conditions and numerical accuracy are verified by comparing strain energy together with kinetic energy and artificial strain energy. It is shown that spiral folding pattern requires less energy for deployment and hence that is preferred.