The mechanics properties of different cross-section tubular boom are compared. The results show that TRAC cross-section has greater ratio of the area moment of inertia to packaged height than that of STEM and CTM section. However, the section thickness of TRAC is bigger than that of STEM and CTM, and the shear center doesn't coincide with the centroid, which lead to local bending and torsional buckling. A new cross-section XTEM is presented in this paper, which has two symmetry axes and the shear center coincides with the centroid. Finite element models of the four cross-section booms are built and the area moment of inertia is obtained respectively. The results also show that, with the same packaged height and the section thickness slightly increasing, the area moment of inertia in the two axial directions of XTEM have the increase of 77% and 35% to CTM, the increase of 30 and 6.7 times to STEM, respectively.
