Dynamic modeling for foldable origami space membrane structure with contact-impact during deployment

The dynamic modeling for the foldable origami space membrane structure considering contact-impact during the deployment is studied in this paper. The membrane is discretized using the triangular elements of the Absolute Nodal Coordinate Formulation (ANCF), and the stress–strain relationship of the membrane is determined based on the Stiffness Reduction Model (SRM). A mixed method is proposed for the frictionless contact problem by combining the membrane surface-to-surface (STS) contact elements with the membrane node-to-surface (NTS) contact elements to improve precision. Compared with the traditional STS contact elements, the mixed method can effectively avoid mutual penetration of the element boundaries, especially for the foldable origami membrane structures undergoing overall motions. The penalty method is adopted to enforce the nonpenetration condition. Moreover, special constraints are built for the fold lines, and then the dynamic equations of the membrane multibody system considering the damping effect are formulated. The dynamic deployment procedure of a leaf-in origami membrane structure with contact-impact is performed employing this present mixed method. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the presented mixed method in the solution of the complicated contact problem, and the influence of the contact-impact on the dynamic performance is analyzed.