Experimental and stowing/deploying dynamical simulation of lenticular carbon fiber reinforced polymer thin-walled tubular space boom

Abstract

The stowing and deploying experiment was conducted for three 700 mm long thin-walled tubes, and the structural behavior characteristics parameters were measured clearly, including strain, deformation and wrapping moment. 3D finite element models (FEM) were built subsequently and explicit dynamic method was used to simulate the stowing and deploying of the lenticular carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) thin-walled tubular space boom, which was designed as four-ply (45°/ − 45°/45°/ − 45°) lay-up. The stress and energy during the wrapping process were got and compared with different wrapping angular velocity, the reasonable wrapping angular velocity and effective method were conformed, and structural behavior characteristics were obtained. The results were compared and discussed as well, and the results show that the numerical results by 0.628 rad/s velocity agree well with the measured values. In this paper, the numerical procedure and experimental results are valuable to the optimization design of CFRP thin-walled tubular space boom and future research.