On calculation of preliminary design parameters for lenticular booms

Abstract

Deployable booms play an important role in holding instruments away from the satellites, and the more rigid they are, the greater the attitude stability of the satellite and instruments will be. Several design concepts for the deployable booms have been proposed and implemented, among which the lenticular boom is one of the most rigid ones. In the present paper, a method for estimation of the design parameters of lenticular booms is proposed. The design parameters investigated in this paper are bending and torsional equivalent moments of area, and elastic energy and maximum stresses developed in the flattened booms. The proposed method has been validated against finite-element solutions and is shown to be sufficiently accurate to be safely used for preliminary design of lenticular booms.