Systematically Creased Thin-Film Membrane Structures

Abstract

This paper presents a study of a square membrane, creased according to the Miura-ori folding pattern. When the membrane is allowed to expand from its packaged configuration, it initially expands elastically under zero corner forces. Starting from this naturally expanded configuration, the paper investigates the stress distribution and the load-displacement relationship when in-plane, diagonal loads are applied at the corners. It is found that out-of-plane bending is the main load-carrying mode and, for stress magnitudes typical of current solar-sail designs, the behavior of the membrane remains linear elastic. A simple analytical model, originally proposed for randomly creased membranes, is shown to predict with good accuracy the load-displacement relationship of the corners. It uses physically based and hence directly measurable membrane parameters.