Uniform-tension form-finding design for cable-mesh deployable reflectors

Space deployable cable-mesh reflector antennas are required to be tensioned in a self-equilibrated state through form-finding design. For this problem, an iterative design method is presented, which consists of two steps, one for the front net and the other for the rear net. First, the front net is designed iteratively with the combination of force density method and surface stress density method. With all the front net nodes on the ideal paraboloid, the tension of the cables and stress of the membranes are designed to be uniform. Second, according to the shape and tensions of the front net, the maximum tension ratio of the rear net is minimized with the tension ties remaining vertical, using the equilibrium matrix method. Numerical simulations indicate that the proposed method can effectively implement the from-finding design of cable-mesh reflector antennas considering both cables and membranes.