Equipments and Materials for Tribotesting in Open Space on International Space Lab

Abstract

The problems of hardware and methodology of ground-based and on-board tribotesting are discussed as well as the main features of space test equipment. New materials for space tribosystems are presented. The method of estimation and selection of equivalent conditions of space- and ground-based tribotestings is considered. The method is based on comparing the results of experiments in multidimensional feature space. Input and output parameters of the experiments are interpreted as coordinates of a point, representing conditions of tribosystems in the multidimensional space. Analysis of the distance between corresponding points allows one to solve the problem of selection of equivalence conditions of ground-based test and estimate uncontrolled parameters of space-born experiment).

Keywords

• Space tribology
• Experiment “Tribospace”
• On-board tribometer
• Ttribotesting