Analysis of mechanical properties of wire mesh for mesh reflectors by fractal mechanics

●The wire mesh has been proved to be a self-similar structure with fractal characteristics.●The proposed identification method of elastic parameters of wire mesh has high precision.●The nonlinear size effect of elastic parameters of wire mesh has been revealed.●The prediction method of elastic parameters is verified for mesh reflectors.

The knitted wire mesh is often used as a reflecting surface of large deployable antennas. Because different wire meshes have different electrical properties, it is very important and necessary to research the analysis method of mechanical properties of wire meshes. The mechanical analysis of the wire mesh is very difficult because of the complex structure and the nonlinear size effect. This paper has put forward a fractal mechanics method for the wire mesh to derive the stiffness of mesh reflectors in modeling of mechanics applications. First, the fractal characteristics of the knitted wire mesh are revealed according to the fractal geometry theory. Then, the elastic performance parameters of the small-scale wire mesh are obtained in the form of the orthotropic plane stress structure by the finite element method. For the fractal structure of the wire mesh, the stiffness matrix of the large-scale wire mesh is completely determined by the elastic parameters of the small-scale wire mesh. The two-bar tricot mesh is used as examples to illustrate the method of the fractal mechanics analysis of wire meshes for mesh reflectors.