Report on Microgravity Experiments of Self-Deployable Truss Structure Consisting of BCON Booms

抄録

Self-deployable space structures such as de-orbit device using membranes and solar sails have been actively studied and developed in recent years. These structures have convex tapes as extension booms in many cases because those tapes have lightweight, high efficiency for storage, and high self-extending force. Among those booms, a braid coated bi-convex(BCON) boom has been proposed by Watanabe, et al. The BCON boom consists of two convex tapes and braid mesh. The BCON boom has higher specific rigidity than a single convex tape, so that it is expected to apply it for various large space structures. The author conducted microgravity experiments in order to perform the demonstration of deployment and to verify the validity of numerical analysis. In tis paper, deployment analysis and microgravity experimental result are reported.