Small-diameter membrane reflector wrinkling

This study concerns the wrinkling performance of thin membranes for use as novel reflectors in space-based telescopes. We introduce small-scale experiments for inducing and interrogating wrinkling patterns in at membranes, and we capture these details computationally by performing a range of finite element analysis. The overall aim is to assess the sophistication of modelling, to verify the feasibility of a small-diameter reector concept proposed in accompanying work. © 2009 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc.