Sensitivity analysis of deployable flexible space structures with a large number of design parameters

The reliability and dynamic performance of deployable flexible space structures significantly depend on their key design parameters. Sensitivity analysis of these design parameters in the frame of multibody dynamics can serve as a powerful tool to evaluate and improve the dynamic performances of deployable space structures. Nevertheless, previous studies on the sensitivity analysis are mainly confined to planar multibody systems with a few design parameters. In this study, an efficient computational methodology is proposed to perform the sensitivity analysis of the complex deployable space structures with a large number of design parameters. Firstly, the analytical sensitivity analysis formulations of objective functions with the parameter-dependent integration bounds are deduced via the direct differentiation method and adjoint variable method. A checkpointing scheme is further introduced to assist the backward integration of the high-dimensional differential algebraic equations of the adjoint variables. The flexible beams in the deployable flexible space structure are described by the locking-free three-node spatial beam elements of absolute nodal coordinate formulation. Furthermore, a parallelized automatic differentiation algorithm is proposed to efficiently evaluate the complex partial derivatives in the sensitivity analysis formulations. Finally, four numerical examples are provided to validate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed computational methodology.