Deployment Simulations for SAM

Currently, deployment simulations of SAM are carried out in order to observe the performance of the membrane from the packed compressed state to the inflated flat shape. The program LS-DYNA is used for this kind of simulation due to its capabilities in inflation simulation (airbag simulation). The control volume method is used in this simulation due to its simplicity by subjecting the inside of the inflated membrane to a uniform pressure. The simulation was started with just one hexagonal element to validate if LS-DYNA can be used for the deployment simulation due to the fact of the rather computational expensive calculation necessary for the simulation. It could be concluded that the simulation performed quite well and it was decided to carry out deployment simulations on the possible sounding rocket set up of SAM with 18 hexagonal elements resulting in a diameter of roughly 80 cm in full deployed configuration (from a stored volume of 10x10x4cm³). Different folding patterns of the membrane are considered at the moment to fit it into the 10x10x4cm³ volume available in the StrathSat-R cube satellite.