BUCKLING THEORETIC ANALYSIS OF COILABLE HINGED EXTENDABLE / RETRACTABLE SPACE MAST

The detail design philosophy, construction characteristic and structural mechanical performances are firstly introduced, and mechanism of expanding and folding procedure is described for one kind of continuous longeron extendible mast with hinges, named Hinged Mast. Based on the elastic stability theorem and Castigliano energy principle, the critical buckling forces to activate deployment are formulated respectively in detail for the local coil mode and helix mode, and series of numerical computations are performed for structural parametric analysis of hinged space mast. The analytical theory can make a significant contribution to the design of space mast.