Solar sail IKAROS’s membrane has unexpectedly deformed into a pyramid shape. Using finite element analysis, previous studies proposed the curvature of thin-film solar cells as a possible cause for this deformation and showed that a square sail consisting of four trapezoid petals tends to deform into a pyramid shape or a saddle one. The global deformation, however, was not verified experimentally. This study aims to shed light to the effect of the curved thin-film devices on the global deformation using a scaled model of the sail and to experimentally verify the finite element model of the scaled sail. Our results show that the simulation and experimental results for the out-of-plane deformation match for the saddle shapes, but those of the pyramid shapes are different. The disagreement between the simulation and experimental result is likely due to the adhesive layer. The difference in the simulationexperiment agreement between the saddle- and pyramid-shape cases is due to out-of-plane stiffness. It is suggested that the prediction of out-of-plane deformation in the saddle shape is more accurate than that in the pyramid shape because the adjacent petals contact each other and have high tensile stress in the circumferential direction in the saddle shape case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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