ORBITAL DEBRIS IMPACT SURVIVABILITY MODELS FOR ROBOTIC SATELLITES

轨道碎片以高超音速（7公里/秒或更高）飞行，对卫星构成重大威胁。根据轨道和表面积的不同，一些航天器在其使用寿命期间可能会经历数十次1 - 10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，并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，因此确保这些资产免受此类情况的保护非常重要。拟议的研究计划的长期目标是开发有效的分析工具-预测轨道碎片撞击生存能力模型-用于典型和未来的卫星结构布置，设计人员可以使用它来评估卫星任务中碎片撞击的后果。通过结合物理超高速撞击实验和高保真数值模拟，该研究项目将在短期内重点研究卫星结构最常用的外部元件——夹层板的弹道性能。除了结构功能外，夹心板还为卫星内部对冲击敏感的部件（电路板、电缆、加压推进剂储罐等）提供轨道碎片保护。然而，目前业内用于确定这些重要保护元件穿孔/无穿孔阈值的弹道极限模型往往无法提供准确的预测，并且受到多种主要限制，包括在开发过程中考虑的冲击条件和面板设计参数数量有限。该研究将通过以半经验性能方程和人工神经网络的形式开发精确的弹道极限模型来推进最先进的技术，用于广泛扩展的夹层板设计参数和冲击条件，从而能够对涉及此类面板的不同卫星配置进行高精度的生存能力分析。拟议的发展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导者。

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 tools-predictive orbital debris impact survivability models-for 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 panels-the 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.