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.
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