An energy flow analysis for multibody dynamic behavior of cable-membrane system

The membrane structure in aerospace products is hung by cables to construct a microgravity environment during ground testing. The rigid motion and the flexible large deformation of conjoint cable-membrane system are nonlinearly coupled in the dynamic deployment process, in which excessive deformations of membrane caused by inappropriate cable lengths and driving loads are difficult to be predicted. In this paper, a novel analysis method based on energy flow is proposed to reveal the dynamic deployment characteristics of the cable-membrane system. The multibody dynamic model of the flexible cable-membrane system is established by the absolute node coordinate formulation and the coupling effect of rigid motion and flexible large deformation is accurately represented. The connection conditions between the cable and membrane structures at assembly positions are deduced. The formulations for kinetic energy and strain energy are explicitly derived to accurately quantify the energy flow within the system. The accuracy of the dynamic model of the cable-membrane system is verified by experimental validation of the deployment process. The asynchronous folding effect of the membrane array and the lagging traction of the hanging cable during the folding process are analyzed with various driving loads and lengths of hanging cables from the perspective of system energy flow. The correlation between the energy variations of the cable and the membrane is revealed to enable the monitoring of the easily measured cable motion to provide insight into the complex membrane motion, which has significant implications for optimizing system parameters and designing active control strategies for the cable-membrane system.