A thermal-flutter criterion for an open thin-walled circular cantilever beam subject to solar heating

The flexible attachments of spacecraft may undergo Thermally Induced Vibration (TIV) on orbit due to the suddenly changed solar heating. The unstable TIV, called thermal-flutter, can cause serious damage to the spacecraft. In this paper, the coupled bending-torsion thermal vibration equations for an open thin-walled circular cantilever beam are established. By analyzing the stability of these equations based on the first Lyapunov method, the thermal-flutter criterion can be obtained. The criterion is very different form that of closed thin-walled beams because the torsion has great impact on the stability of the TIV for open thin-walled beams. Several numerical simulations are conducted to demonstrate that the theoretical predictions agree very well with the finite element results, which mean that the criterion are reliable. © 2018 Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics