Development of Forming Method of Deployable Boom from Thermoplastic Polymer Composite

Abstract

This paper studies deployable elements which are used in satellites and different terrestrial antenna devices. Many deployable elements are made from steel or thermoset polymer composite materials and have the following disadvantages like length limitation of deployable elements, labour intensity of manufacturing process of deployable elements etc. For this purpose a deployable tube boom element was chosen and a forming method for manufacturing deployable tube element from thermoplastic polymer composite material was developed.