THE STEPHEN B. KLEIN FACULTY OF |AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

A PostDoctoral Seminar by Eyal Baruch: As space missions such as solar sails, reflector antennas and solar arrays increase in size, their dynamics become ever more important, since large deflections can lead to efficiency loss, damage, or stability loss. The first step in addressing these problems is the accurate identification of system dynamics, most notably vibration mode shapes, natural frequencies, and damping ratios. However, these systems often cannot be tested at full scale prior to deployment, and numerical simulations may overlook key components, such as the correct damping mechanisms. This problem is further intensified by the complexity of carbon fiber thin shells, which serve as the fundamental building blocks of ultralight deployable structures. For such systems, classical similitude methods such as dimensional analysis (DA) are inapplicable, since parameters such as shell thickness and the stiffness matrix cannot be experimentally scaled.