2021 Volume 20 Pages 73-80
Spin-type solar sails have the advantage of being lighter compared to other deployment methods, but can exhibit complex deployment dynamics. Severe asymmetric dynamics was observed in the deployment experiment in a vacuum chamber. In this study, this deployment behavior is reproduced by numerical simulations using multi-particle techniques that take into account membrane collisions. We propose a simple method to predict whether a significant asymmetry will occur by calculating the energy change of the membrane. The conditions for realizing symmetric deployment are presented.
