Active Control of Inflatable Structure Membrane Wrinkles Using Genetic Algorithm and Neural Network

This paper investigates the application of genetic algorithm and neural network in active control of inflatable structure membrane wrinkles. The membrane to be controlled is a 500mm × 500mm Kapton membrane, pulled by two pairs of forces applied at the four corners along the diagonals. Different combinations of the tensions produce various wrinkles within the membrane. The genetic algorithm is introduced briefly and then used in searching for the optimal force that minimizes the amplitude of the membrane. To predict the membrane flatness in space where direct measurement of membrane flatness is difficult, a neural network model is proposed to map boundary stretching tensions and space environment to membrane flatness. Numerical simulation shows that genetic algorithm works very well in optimizing the tensions and neural network is effective to estimate the flatness of the membrane.