Inflation

 

The LS-DYNA code simulates the inflation deployment of inflatable structures. It uses a control volume approach and it is very attractive because it uses a simple ideal gas law to calculate the pressure change and each control volume and then uses the pressure to drive an incremental finite element analysis of the opening structure. We will make additional simulations to evaluate the effects of the rate of inflation, the presence of residual air in packaged configuration and the effect of deploying in presence of gravity. At the moment we are working on it, further we will update this section with all results. 

 

Thermal Environment

 

There are negligible thermal effects during deployment phase of the experiment, despite the low temperatures at 90000km due to the thermal conduction of the launch.