Covering Pressure and Friction Effect on Bending Stiffness and Natural Frequency for Braid-coated Biconvex Tape Boom

Abstract

We investigate the effects of covering pressure and friction between convex tapes on the bending stiffness and natural frequency of a braid-coated biconvex tape (BCON) boom. We establish an analytical model by comparing experimental and analytical results of BCON booms because the braid-coated boundary conditions of the boom are complicated and the analytical model is difficult to construct. BCON booms will have various uses for regular and large-scale deployable space structures such as solar sails, solar array panels, and de-orbit mechanisms. Thus, the bending stiffness, natural frequency, and structural characteristics after deployment are experimentally measured. Several parametric analyses are also calculated by using the proposed contact analysis model. On the basis of these results, we discuss the effect of the braid coating and future work.