Dynamic Simulation and Experimental Verification of Foldable Thin-film Using ANCF

The lightweight and foldable characteristics of foldable thin-film structures align with the development trend of large-scale and lightweight spacecraft. Consequently, they are frequently employed in spacecraft components, including large antennas, sunshades, etc.In order to analyse the nonlinear properties of space thin-film origami structures, the dynamics of the thin-film and the crease is described based on experiments and numerical model . Specifically, the kinematic of space thin-film origami structures is described based on the Absolute Nodal Coordinate Formulation (ANCF). The crease is modeled by pre-configuration elements. The locking problem of the fully parameterized element is improved by applying a selective reduced integration method.The parameters of the film creases are identified based on the tensile experiments + Particle swarm optimization (PSO).A vision-based single crease unfolding experiment is constructed to verify that the simulation of film configuration changes during unfolding is consistent with the experiment.Additionally,the unfolding driving force is obtained by a multiple-creases unfolding tensile experiment. The comparison between the simulation and the experiment validate the simulation capability of the model applied to the unfolding process of complex film structures.This paper presents a more precise and systematic methodology for simulating thin-film unfolding process, which can be employed to inform the design and analysis of spatial thin-film structures.