ORBITAL DEBRIS IMPACT SURVIVABILITY MODELS FOR ROBOTIC SATELLITES

以高超声速(7公里/S及更高)飞行的轨道碎片对卫星构成了重大威胁。根据轨道和表面积的不同，一些航天器在其生命周期中可能经历数十次110毫米轨道碎片的超高速撞击，导致飞行和任务关键系统的故障和损坏，最终给航天器所有者造成数十亿美元的经济损失。由于开发无人(机器人)卫星一直是加拿大空间计划的主要组成部分，确保保护这些资产免受此类情况的影响非常重要。拟议的研究方案的长期目标是开发有效的分析工具，为典型的和未来的卫星结构安排建立预测轨道碎片撞击的生存能力模型，设计者可以使用该模型来评估碎片对卫星飞行任务的影响。 利用物理超高速撞击实验和高保真数值模拟相结合的方法，这项研究计划将从短期角度重点研究夹层板的弹道性能，夹层板是卫星结构中最常用的外部元件。除了结构功能外，夹层板还为卫星的内部撞击敏感部件(电路板、电缆、加压推进剂箱等)提供轨道碎片保护。然而，工业界目前用来确定这些重要防护元件的穿孔/不穿孔阈值的弹道极限模型往往不能提供准确的预测，并受到多重主要限制，包括在开发过程中考虑的撞击条件和面板设计参数的数量有限。这项研究将通过开发半经验性能方程和人工神经网络形式的精确弹道极限模型来推进最先进的技术，以广泛扩展的夹层板设计参数和撞击条件的形式，使涉及此类板的不同卫星配置的高精度生存能力分析成为可能。拟议的开发对于设计下一代轻型机器人卫星至关重要，可以通过防止任务失败来避免数十亿美元的成本，通过避免过于保守的屏蔽设计来降低卫星发射成本，并使加拿大成为机器人卫星制造的领先者。

Traveling at hypersonic speeds (7 km/s and higher), orbital debris represents a major threat to satellites. Depending on the orbit and surface area, some spacecraft may experience tens of hypervelocity impacts of 1 10 mm orbital debris over their lifetime, resulting in failure and damage of flight- and mission-critical systems and, ultimately, leading to multibillion-dollar financial losses for spacecraft owners. As developing unmanned (robotic) satellites has always been the major component of Canada's space program, it is highly important to ensure the protection of these assets from such scenarios. The proposed research program's long-term objective is to develop efficient analysis toolspredictive orbital debris impact survivability modelsfor typical and prospective satellite structural arrangements, which designers can use to evaluate the consequences of debris impacts for satellite missions. Using a combination of physical hypervelocity impact experiments and high-fidelity numerical simulations, this research program, in the short-term perspective, will focus on investigating the ballistic performance of sandwich panelsthe most commonly used external elements of satellite structures. Besides structural functions, sandwich panels provide orbital debris protection for the internal impact-sensitive components of satellites (circuit boards, cables, pressurized propellant tanks, etc.). However, ballistic limit models currently employed by the industry to determine the perforation/no perforation thresholds of these important protective elements often fail to provide accurate predictions and suffer from multiple major limitations, including limited numbers of impact conditions and panel design parameters considered in their development. This study will advance the state-of-the-art by developing accurate ballistic limit models in the form of semi-empirical performance equations and artificial neural networks for a widely extended spectrum of sandwich panels' design parameters and impact conditions, enabling a high-precision survivability analysis of different satellite configurations involving such panels. The proposed developments are essential for designing next-generation lightweight robotic satellites, enabling multibillion-dollar cost avoidance through preventing mission failures, reducing satellite launching costs by avoiding over-conservative shielding designs, and allowing Canada to emerge as a leader in robotic satellite manufacturing.