Preliminary Study of the Local Buckling Behaviour of DLR's CFRP Booms induced by the Stowing Process

Kurzfassung

In this paper the local buckling behavior during the stowing process of DLR's mid-size Gossamer-1 boom is investigated. More precisely the formation of local buckles at the inner boom half-shell resulting from stowage is addressed. The base of this preliminary study is a finite element model of a short boom, which is presented first. Nonlinear finite element analyses of the stowing process with two different configurations are performed using free and fixed boom ends representing the different constraints during the reeling process of a full length boom. The simulation results show that local buckling occur during the reeling process, which decrease the stowing efficiency of the boom and lead to regions of concentrated high strains, which are more than twice as high as the analytical strains from reeling the boom.