Tip force during blossoming of coiled deployable booms

Deployable booms are an essential part of the deployable structures family used in space. They can be stowed in a coiled form and extended into a rod like structure in an action similar to that of a carpenter's tape measure. “Blossoming” is a failure mode that some boom deployers experience where the booms uncoil within the deployer instead of extending. This paper develops a method to predict the force that a boom can exert before blossoming occurs by using the strain energy stored in the coiled boom and in the compression springs. An experimental apparatus is used to gain practical results to compare to the theory.