Deployment and Blossoming Analysis of a Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) Collapsible Tubular Mast (CTM) Boom for Aerospace Applications

Extendable tip-spring booms commonly manufactured from FRP laminates are new kinds of deployable mechanisms widely used for aerospace technologies. Among them, three kinds of boom cross-section configurations are commonly selected: Collapsible Tubular Mast (CTM), Storable Tubular Extendable Member (STEM) and Triangular Rollable And Collapsible (TRAC) booms. Particularly, comparing with the other two kinds of booms, CTMs with closed cross-section geometries are relatively superior in twisting and buckling properties. Meanwhile, blossoming is a failure mode during a boom’s deployment process where the boom expands in the restraint mechanism instead of pushing the tip outwards, which is mainly triggered by an exaggerated load acting on the tip. For the sake of preventing blossoming happening, this paper focused on acquiring the highest tip load an FRP CTM boom could sustain through establishing an analytical model. Moreover, a numerical study was carried out to give some verification, and afterward, the previous experimental data was also provided for comparing. The research in this paper can afford some guidance concerning FRP CTM boom design.