A combined analytical and experimental study on space inflatable booms

Development and infusion of break-through technologies is needed to enable better, faster and cheaper space missions to be flown in the future. One of these technologies, space inflatable structure, is currently receiving much attention. The use of space inflatable structures can potentially revolutionize the architecture and design of many large, lightweight space systems that must have extremely high packing efficiency at launch and be reliably deployed in space. Examples of these systems include sunshields, solar arrays, solar sails, telescopes, concentrators, and space radar antennae. To facilitate effective designs of these space inflatable systems, the behaviors of their fundamental, building-block structural elements, the inflatable booms, need to be thoroughly characterized and understood. This paper presents experimental and analytical study results on different types of space inflatable booms, including the self-rigidizable carpenter-tape-reinforced aluminum laminate booms.