AcknowledgementsI would like to thank all of my supervisors for their help and advice over the course of my PhD. I would also like to thank the technicians in the faculty and in the University workshop as well as my fellow PhD students at the Surrey Space Centre. Finally I would like to thank my Parents for the support they have given me throughout my education. AbstractCoiled deployable booms have been used extensively in space and are a large part of the deployable space structures family. They have a wide variety of uses such as the deployment of instruments, gravity-gradient stabilisation masses and more recently solar sails. Most deployable booms are similar to a carpenter's tape measure in the way they are coiled in a retracted condition and then deploy to form the boom structure. There have been many developments in the optimisation of boom properties in the deployed state, by using different shape cross sections and by using different materials. The first metal tape spring booms have developed into the more modern booms with a variety of cross sections. One aspect that is common to all booms is the coiling and uncoiling process and the difficulties associated with this. Blossoming, where the boom starts to uncoil within the boom deployer, can lead to the jamming of the mechanism. The reasons behind blossoming have not been thoroughly investigated, leaving designers of booms, and boom housing mechanisms to try and mitigate this problem themselves, often by trial and error. This work investigates boom blossoming with the aim of better understanding the underlying mechanics so that more effective deployment systems can be designed in the future.A method is developed that uses the strain energy stored in coiled booms to find the maximum tip force that can be achieved before blossoming occurs. This method is also used to investigate the central spindle torque during blossoming. The effects that the coil geometry and the friction Chapter 2 gives a literature review on the subject and introduces the problem of blossoming. Chapter 3 develops a model that uses the strain energy stored in the coiled booms and the compression rollers to find the tip force during blossoming. Chapter 4 uses the strain energy stored in the coiled booms and the compression rollers to find the self deployment torque and the central spindle torque during blossoming. Chapter 5 details the relative motion of the different layers of boom and how they slide past one another. Chapter 6 describes the design and operation of the experimental test set-up used for the experiments carried out for the thesis and Chapter 7 concludes. −0.0450 −0.0450 − 0 . 0 4 3 2 ] ; 110 o n e s p 2 t = [ −0.0700 −0.0575 0 . 0 0 8 0 0 . 0 4 4 0 0 . 0 3 2 0 −0.0365 −0.0490 −0.0445 −0.0458 − 0 . 0 4 8 0 ] ; 111 o n e s p 3 t = [ −0.0665 −0.0382 0 . 0 1 9 0 0 . 0 1 6 4 0 . 0 0 4 −0.0453 −0.0490 −0.0470 −0.0465 − 0 . 0 4 8 5 ] ; 112 % %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% 113 f i g u r e ( 1 )
Deployable booms are an essential part of the deployable structures family used in space. They can be stowed in a coiled form and extended into a rod like structure in an action similar to that of a carpenter's tape measure. "Blossoming" is a failure mode that some boom deployers experience where the booms uncoil within the deployer instead of extending. This paper develops a method to predict the force that a boom can exert before blossoming occurs by using the strain energy stored in the coiled boom and in the compression springs.An experimental apparatus is used to gain practical results to compare to the theory.
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