The increasing interest in scientific and technological applications of tethers in space highlights the need of considering their significant vulnerability to severance by collisions with meteoroids and orbital debris. This paper presents an experimental campaign aimed at determining the critical particle diameter that severs a 1.36 mm Dyneema rope at 5 km/s. For this purpose, a special support structure has been realised to hold the tethers during the impact tests, making it possible to control many experimental parameters that could affect the ballistic response of the rope. The results of twenty hypervelocity impact experiments are presented and discussed.

Hypervelocity Impacts on Dyneema Ropes

FRANCESCONI, ALESSANDRO;PAVARIN, DANIELE;ZACCARIOTTO, MIRCO
2002

Abstract

The increasing interest in scientific and technological applications of tethers in space highlights the need of considering their significant vulnerability to severance by collisions with meteoroids and orbital debris. This paper presents an experimental campaign aimed at determining the critical particle diameter that severs a 1.36 mm Dyneema rope at 5 km/s. For this purpose, a special support structure has been realised to hold the tethers during the impact tests, making it possible to control many experimental parameters that could affect the ballistic response of the rope. The results of twenty hypervelocity impact experiments are presented and discussed.
File in questo prodotto:
Non ci sono file associati a questo prodotto.
Pubblicazioni consigliate

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11577/2431132
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus ND
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
  • OpenAlex ND
social impact