Numerical simulation of the folding and deployment of a polymer reflector

Abstract The paper describes the methodology developed to simulate the stowing and deployment phases of a flexible reflector to be deployed from a microsatellite (CubeSat). The reflector structure is modeled as a nonlinear shell with viscoelastic material properties. Its stowing process is described as a quasistatic equilibrium problem under inequality constraints. The constitutive law of the shell model results from a specialization of the 3D Maxwell viscoelastic law to shell-structural behavior. A simple test consisting of a viscoelastic plate under constrained displacement aims at validating the multibranch Maxwell model implemented in the shell element. A first simulation of a reflector petal with elastic properties is performed to verify the aptitude of the methodology to simulate the folding phase and predict the resulting stresses in stowed configuration. The second numerical simulation of the same reflector petal aims at predicting its viscoelastic deformation over a time period including all phases of the deployment, in order to determine the residual shape aberrations in the deployed configuration.