Review of Inflatable Booms for Deployable Space Structures: Packing and Rigidization

This is the accepted, peer-reviewed manuscript of an article originally published in the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets. The final published version is available at http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/1.A32598.Inflatable structures offer the potential of compactly stowing lightweight structures,\ud which assume a fully deployed state in space. An important category of space inflatables\ud are cylindrical booms, which may form the structural members of trusses or the support\ud structure for solar sails. Two critical and interdependent aspects of designing inflatable\ud cylindrical booms for space applications are i) packaging methods that enable compact\ud stowage and ensure reliable deployment, and ii) rigidization techniques that provide\ud long-term structural ridigity after deployment. The vast literature in these two fields\ud is summarized to establish the state of the art.The work described in this paper forms part of the DeployTech project; the authors gratefully\ud acknowledge the funding from the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme (FP7)

On the effect of prestress on the bistable behavior of tape-springs

The effect of bending pre-stress on the bi-stable behaviour of a tape-spring is investigated by specifying a thermal gradient through its thickness, in order to simulate residual bending. It is shown that the magnitude of the self-stress state which arises influences the bi-stability characteristics of the pre-stressed tape-spring