Comparison of Two Folded Methods of Solar Sails

Abstract

The solar sails can be deployed by jointed truss or by inflated support tube. The deployed process and final deployed state of the solar sails is closely related to the design of the deployed mechanism. Therefore, the design of the deployed mechanism is very important for this new type of spacecraft. In this paper, we study the problem of the inflatable deployment of the solar sail; we utilized MSC.Patran to build the Z-folded and the Z+ curly-folded finite element models. LS-DYNA was used to simulate the dynamic characteristics of the above two solar sails under different conditions, and the results were analyzed. The results show that in the model that adopted the Z-folded method, the deployed process is relatively stable, and the effect of deployment is good, which is more suitable for practical application.