Deployment dynamics simulation and ground test of a large space hoop truss antenna reflector

In recent years, the space community has paid much attention to the development of the hoop truss antenna of satellite so as to improve the quality of telecommunication of high frequency. The antenna reflector is mainly composed of a mesh net and a deployable ring truss, which can be considered as a rigid-flexible multibody system. During the research process of the hoop truss antenna of satellite, an accurate and effective dynamics model has to be built. In order to describe the flexible components in this system accurately, the Absolute-Coordinate-Based (ACB) method combining the Absolute Nodal Coordinate Formulation (ANCF) and Natural Coordinate Formulation (NCF) is used to predict the deployment dynamics of the reflector antenna. Furthermore, the parallel computation methodology based on the multilevel decomposition method and the Schur Complement method is used to improve the computational efficiency. Using the parallel computation methodology, the dynamic simulation of a rigid-flexible multibody system is efficiently completed based on the Message Passing Interface. To analyze the asynchronous deployment phenomenon in the ground test, the decrease of the driving force is applied to the antenna reflector model. Finally, based on the above method, a computational program is developed via the Fortran language to analyze the deployment dynamics of the hoop truss mesh antennas. Using the program, the second phase of the deployment process of the hoop truss mesh antennas is simulated, and the computational results are verified by a deployment experiment on the 4 m aperture antenna reflector.