Modal Analysis of a Coilable Composite Tape Spring Boom with Parabolic Cross Section

The need for using extendable booms to deploy payloads, solar sails, and antennas is ever increasing. Their inclusion in future space missions can provide a viable alternative to massive truss-like structures as well as significantly reduce fuel mass requirements for attitude control systems. Over the last few decades, various designs of these have been developed and studied. However, at the present, flight heritage booms are considered inadequate in terms of both bending and torsional stiffness. Booms with conic cross sections have not been studied in the past and we believe they might have certain advantages in these aspects in their deployed configuration. This chapter aims to investigate the dynamic characterization of a composite tape spring boom with a parabolic cross section. This boom sample is also planned to be the primary payload on a 3 U cubesat at Virginia Tech, Ut ProSat-1. The cubesat mission aims to collect acceleration data from the tip of the deployed boom. This data will then be validated using the test data from the ground experiments. Finally, this chapter discusses the setup of a finite element analysis in Abaqus as well as future plans for the ground vibration experiments.