Folding and deployment of curved tape springs

This paper presents a study of a special type of tape springs, that are both longitudinally and transversely curved, as required for the ribs of a novel deployable reflector. It is shown that, although curved tape springs have much in common with straight tape springs, there is an important difference for equal-sense folds with small rotation angles. Thus, it is shown that full deployment of the reflector cannot be guaranteed if equal-sense folds are used when packaging it.