Comparative finite element and experimental analysis of a quasi-static inflation of a thin deployable membrane space structure

Abstract

The deployment of a thin, one-segment, large membrane space structure is examined by the means of a real time quasi-static inflation experiment with photogrammetry and finite element analysis with the explicit and implicit schemes applied to control volume, corpuscular and arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian inflation methods. The numerical solutions comparison is based on mesh size, energy ratio, number of particles, bleed-through leak coefficient, fluid pressure - surface depth stiffness coupling, accuracy and computational efficiency. An optimization of the number of particles and minimization of the bleed-through effects is effectively implemented in corpuscular and ALE approaches. The corpuscular and arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian are found to be most resembling the experimental results in the dynamic shape changes and the time history of the gas properties, but computationally expensive. The control volume, although computationally efficient, is lacking the adequate fluid-structure interaction, thus less accurately recreating the overall dynamics of the morphing surface. Only 0.2%–1.75% and 0.5%–2.5% difference is observed between the experimental, analytical and finite element inflation results respectively.