Hybrid uncertainty analysis of a rigid-flexible-thermal coupled solar panel system composed of composite laminated plates

In this paper, the thermally induced vibrations and hybrid uncertainty quantification are studied for a deployable solar panel system under orbital thermal environments. The solar panel system is modeled by using a rigid-flexible-thermal coupling framework, which incorporates the thin-plate elements of reduced-order in ANCF and the natural coordinate formulation. Deterministic and uncertainty dynamic analyses are carried out for low Earth orbit (LEO) and geostationary Earth orbit (GEO), respectively. For the hybrid uncertainty analysis in a long duration, a non-intrusive surrogate-assisted strategy is adopted, in which the conventional polynomial chaos-Legendre metamodel (PCLM) is used for smooth responses, while an improved PCLM-LMD method is integrated for phase-sensitive oscillatory responses. Numerical results demonstrate that the adopted surrogate approaches effectively capture the time-varying response dispersion in the temperature, the flexible-panel displacement, and the angular velocity of the rigid satellite body. The shadow entry and exit phases are identified as the most critical intervals for both dynamic response amplification and uncertainty propagation. Notably, the through-thickness temperature difference exhibits significantly higher sensitivity to input uncertainties than the mid-surface temperature. Furthermore, the influence of uncertain inputs on instantaneous amplitude, phase, and residual trend is found to differ markedly between sunlight and shadow regions. These findings provide useful guidance for the dynamic prediction and uncertainty-informed design of deployable solar panel systems operating in complex orbital thermal environments.