Nowadays, torsion springs are used widely in aerospace equipments. In most of gravity gradient booms and some of solar panel extruders, torsion springs plays an important role in expanding these mechanisms. Since these mechanisms are constantly exposed to severe thermal gradients during orbital circulation and because of sensitivity of these mechanisms, it is important to identify the behavior of their elements under temperature variations. Therefore, in this study, the effect of temperature and its variation on these springs and their performance are investigated analytically and experimentally. To investigate the torsional behavior of the spring, an specific test setup is designed and constructed. This test train includes power transmission, temperature control chamber, temperature controller and torque meter. Torsion springs are selected from hard drawn spring steel. At the temperature range of
to
,the effect of temperature variation on the produced torque due to different forced torsion angles are investigated. As well as the spring constant variation with temperature is obtained and compared with analytically obtained data
. The obtained results validate the consistency and accuracy of the analytical modeling and the applied experimental test train and procedure.
Article Type:
Original Research |
Subject:
Aerospace Structures Received: 2020/11/27 | Accepted: 2021/02/17 | Published: 2021/04/30