Design and Dynamic Analysis of Z-Folding Drag Sails

In recent years, with the rapid development of related technologies in the aerospace field, more and more artificial spacecraft have been launched into space, resulting in serious space environmental problems, and a large number of failed spacecrafts have appeared in space, which have become space debris, seriously affecting the safety of spacecraft in orbit and crowding out precious orbital resources. In response to these space debris, various countries and research institutions have proposed different solutions, among which the drag sail scheme with light weight, simple structure, low power consumption and strong operability has been widely recognized. Since the drag sail is often used in micro-nano satellites, it is required to reduce the size as much as possible under the premise of ensuring its functions, among which the folding method of the drag sail film has an important impact on its external size and unfolding effect. In this paper, the Z-folding dynamics simulation research of the drag sail is carried out, and two different Z-folding methods of the drag sail are designed, the finite element models of four drag sails with different areas under the two Z-folding modes are constructed, and their unfolding results under the constraint of the same acceleration of 6 m/s2 are analyzed, and the maximum stress they are subjected to is less than the yield limit of the drag sail film of 2.31 × 108 Pa, and the stress of the drag sail using the primary folding crease is parallel to the hypotenuse edge is much less than that of the other under the same size. At the same time, the shaking of the drag sail during the unfolding process is also smaller, which has reference significance for the design of the drag sail.