Dynamical reverse folding and residual gas expansion models of flexible thin films

To examine the folding and deployment characteristics of flexible thin film structures in a vacuum environment, a dynamic reverse folding method based on the target structure and an inflation-based deployment method based on the residual gas expansion are proposed. The dynamic characteristics of the flexible thin film structure during the folding process are characterized using the finite element method. Further, the residual gas is used to inflate and unfold the folded structure, and the response characteristics of gas pressure and film volume are obtained. Compared with the thin film unfolding test in a vacuum tank, for a spherical thin film of the same size, under the action of residual gas at 0.05 MPa, when unfolding for 0.34 s, the unfolded volume of the thin film is obtained to be approximately 0.0367 m³, reaching 90.2% of the total unfolded volume of the spherical film in the experiment. Overall, the proposed methods can serve as a design reference for the analysis and optimization of flexible thin films.