A study on the design of deployable cable-panel structure

Recently, large space structures are being developed. From the point of view of payload capacity and transportation efficiency, large space structures are required to be lightweight and highly efficient in their folding. Cable-panel structures are also expected to satisfy the above conditions mainly due to the omission of frames that hold panels structures. However, the deployment of three-dimensional membranes is difficult to control accurately because of the small stiffness normal to membranes. In this study, we discuss the wire location design in the wire-based deployment of three-dimensional plates. And, through experiments, we evaluate 27 design locations of wires for deployment and compare the deployed shape between the designed dimensions and the measured surface. Then, we confirmed the increment of 2.2 percent in height dimension. Furthermore, we confirmed that our proposed deployment method is feasible, and obtained several design criteria for wire design: First, it is necessary to consider an order of deployment to deploy from the outside surface. Second, the design needs to intersect folds at right angles. Third, extending the length of designs without changing the route shape of the designs leads to higher accuracy of the deployment shape without causing a large increase in the required forces. The multi particle system model was applied to predict the deformation of the structure reasonablly.