Structural design of deployable parabolic cylindrical truss-mesh antenna reflector

For the requirement of the space-used large-size cylindrical working surface, a deployable parabolic cylindrical truss-mesh antenna reflector constructed by quadrangular prism modular was proposed. The deploying and folding process of the parabolic cylindrical truss-mesh antenna reflector was realized by the driving assembly of the modular truss. The fitting method of parabolic working surface was extended to the parabolic cylindrical surface. The key design nodes of the support deployable struts were obtained by the radial projection of the uniform distributed nodes in the fitting circle. The front net nodes in the parabolic curve and the rear net nodes in the proposed catenary were obtained by the same method. Based on the front net nodes and rear net nodes, topological configuration of the parabolic cylindrical cable-nets was constructed. The pre-tension optimization design was performed by using the no-linear element method. The optimization results indicate that the maximum error ratio of pre-tension in the parabolic direction to its average value was 12. 3% and the maximum error ratio of pre-tension in the cylindrical direction to its average value was 7. 6 %. Finally, a prototype with the size of 12 m X 12 m was developed. Deployment tests and shape measurements were performed, and the parabolic cylindrical surface errors were tested within 2mm RMS. The results show that the proposed deployable parabolic cylindrical truss-mesh antenna reflector has excellent deploying performance and a high surface precision.