Thin-Shell Deployable Reflectors with Collapsible Stiffeners: Experiments and Simulations

This paper presents an experimental and computational study of four deployable reflectors with collapsible edge stiffeners, to verify the differences in behavior that had been predicted in a previous theoretical study. The experimental models have different geometric configurations and are made of two different plastics. Both folding experiments and vibration tests in the fully deployed configuration are carried out on each model and it is shown that good correlation with finite element simulations can be achieved if detailed effects such as material non-linearity, geometric imperfections, air and gravity effects are included in the computer models.