INSPACE BENDING OF MULTISTABLE BOOMS
Recently NASA has been investigating the usage of bistability in CTM booms; the two stable state configurations being fully rolled (on earth), and fully deployed (up in space). Essentially the bistability comes from the coupling between the tape spring geometry and its antisymmetric composite plies that form the CTM booms. My research focuses on investigating another stable state of a tape spring that might exist mid-way between the rolled and deployed configuration: the “Bend Bistability”. For this purpose, an ‘S’-shaped tape spring structure was designed to show local bistability in both rotation directions (clockwise & counterclockwise). The thesis discusses the finite element analysis (FEA) of various glass fiber / carbon fiber composite tape spring structures. It subsumes parametric studies on the design parameters like radius, opening angle, and length that potentially affect the bistability property. It also includes the challenges and findings of the consequence of each parameter, composite ply orientation on the bend angle. It also explores novel manufacturing techniques to fabricate the ‘S’ structure that can be potentially used to make a repeatable unit cell (S-cell) of a massive deployable space structure used for applications like Solar Sail & In-space assembly.