Fundamental study on lodging an anchor on satellite structure for space debris mitigation system

Abstract

In this study, fundamental experiments for docking method by loading an anchor on satellite structures were carried out and the effects of the anchor shape on the docking properties were investigated. Through the projectile experiments and pull-out experiments, fixing conditions of some projection velocities and the pulling strengths were evaluated. Four types of metal anchors were employed to examine the influence of the anchor shapes on the penetrating performance and pull-out strength. In anchor projection experiments, the effect of projection angles and anchor tip angles on penetrating performance were investigated. The experiments with projection angle up to 30 degree using 2 anchor tip angles were performed. Through the experiments appropriate projection velocities were investigated based on the kinematic energy of the projectiles. It is observed that the anchors did not penetrate to the sample structure when the projection velocities were not sufficient and the anchors passed through when the velocities were too high. Besides, when a projection angle was small compared with a half of tip angle, the metal anchor cannot penetrate into test plate. In the pull-out experiments, the usages of narrow section and large umbrella portion have been proposed and their effectiveness was investigated. The results of the pull-out experiments indicate that the shapes of the anchors affects the pulling strength and the narrow section enlarges the pulling strength. Sufficient tensile strengths of docking for removing space debris were obtained by using a projectile anchor with the appropriate conditions. The effectiveness of docking with satellite structures using the anchor with the appropriate shape was demonstrated through these experiments.

Keywords

• space debris mitigation
• projectile experiments
• impact velocity
• metal anchor
• satellite structure