Deployment behavior of planar gossamer space structures made of plain-woven textile

Abstract

Multifunctional membrane space structures have been developed in the past to realize solar arrays, array antennas, and other applications. However, the deployment of a folded membrane often requires fluctuating forces with high peaks, caused by the stiffness of the crease lines. This study proposes the use of a plain-woven textile as the base membrane for the planar deployment structures primarily because of its high packaging efficiency. The deployment forces required for the folded plain-woven textile structures to be employed in future space applications are experimentally measured. The deployment forces are compared between the proposed textile structures and the conventional film-based membranes to characterize the deployment behavior of the textile structures. Two types of experiments are conducted in this study for the one-dimensional deployment of v-folded membranes and the two-dimensional deployment of quarter Flasher origami structures, respectively. The advantages presented by the deployable textiles are as follows: (i) they require smaller and smoother deployment forces, and (ii) they are insensitive to imperfect boundary conditions. These features are important for the reliable deployment of future space structures.