Slit-tubes and variations of slit tubes such as tape springs have been used on 100s of spacecraft deployable structures since the 1960s due to their simplicity and effectiveness. A slit-tube has a hollow discontinuous cross-section such that it can be opened and forced flat, then rolled. They are primarily used for applications such as monopole antennae and linear actuators that require minimal bending resilliency. They are often been proposed as a primary structure to support bending loads in more complex systems such as solar arrays and power-sails. In practice however, they are not used as bending members except for very few exceptions. One exception is, unfortunately, the Hubble solar array system which, famously had to be replaced with a manned servicing-mission due to structural issues. The weakest qualities of slit tubes, such as the thermomechanical-shock thought to have contributed to the Hubble issues, are mitigated by constructing the slit-tubes from high-strain composite materials, yet a composite slit-tube has not yet flown as of this writing. This is due, in large part, to the lack of public engineering knowledge on the apparently complex behavior of composite slit-tube structures. This paper aims to take a step toward solving the knowledge problem by cohesively combining the current engineering tools for composite slit-tubes, validating them against one another and testing, followed by the identification of further technology and engineering needs.
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