Development of Plasma Gun as a Micro Meteorite Impact Simulator

射弹超高速加速技术的发展，使超高速撞击目标的现象得以消除。对材料抗冲击强度的研究和航天器防护结构的研究也有一定的参考价值。等离子体加速器是用来模拟微流星体撞击航天器的。空间微流星体的质量范围和最可几速度分别在10-15和1g/s和20 km/s之间，我们用单级等离子体加速器加速了小粒子，这种加速器操作简单，但并不总是能获得最有效的加速和对目标的高撞击率。因此，我们建造了一个两级等离子体加速器，以实现更高的冲击速度比以前的目标和更高的冲击率。加速度理论是由Igenbergs等人提出的，但是这里的运作机制和他们的不太一样。我们建立了一台两级等离子体加速器，并尝试将玻璃珠作为微弹进行加速。在这项合作研究中，证实了从弹托发射时弹丸分离良好，我们的激光触发系统工作良好。并与单级法进行了比较。它极大地提高了弹丸的速度和对目标的命中率。虽然过去单级运行时由于撞击率低而使微流星体撞击模拟困难，但这种具有较高撞击率的两级运行方式将使模拟更加巧妙。

The advanced technology for the hypervelocity acceleration of projectiles has been clearing the hypervelocity impact phenomena on a target. It will be available also for researching material strength against impact and the study of the protective structure of space crafts. The plasma accelerator has been developed to simulate micrometeoroid impacts on the crafts. It has been suggested that the mass range and the most probable velocity of micrometeoroids in space are between 10-15 and 1g and 20 km/s, respectively.We have accelerated small particles with a single-stage plasma accelerator, which is easily operated but does not always attain the most effective acceleration and a high impact rate on a target. Therefore, we constructed a two-stage plasma accelerator to realize higher impact velocities than previous ones and higher impact rates on targets. The theory of acceleration has been proposed by Igenbergs et al., but the operational system here is quite different from theirs. The system was tested to accelerate microprojectiles.We constructed a two-stage plasma accelerator and attempted to conduct the acceleration of glass beads as microprojectiles. In this cooperational research, it was confirmed that projectiles were separated well when launched from a sabot, and that our laser trigger system operated well. The two-stage operation was conducted in comparison with single-stage one. It increased the projectile velocity and the impact rate on a target extremely. The velocity greatly depended on the position at the beginning of acceleration and the optimum position was found. Although in the past the low impact rate had made the micrometeoroid impact simulation difficult in the single-stage operation, this two-stage one with higher impact rate will give the skillful simulation.