Dynamics of the Net Systems, Capturing Space Debris

Abstract

According to NASA, more than 20,000 pieces of debris are tracked as they orbit the Earth. They all travel at speeds up to 7,800 m/s, fast enough for a relatively small piece of orbital debris to damage a space vehicle, International Space Station or any future space system. Therefore, research on the space debris removal and mitigation of the impact of the space debris is attracting more and more attention of the international space community, including engineers, scientists, designers and space experts. In the current paper, the comprehensive non-linear models of following net capturing systems for debris removal are developed: (a) a rapidly deployed system, involving spider-like webs, ejected towards the remote targeted debris; (b) spin-stabilised ejected spider-like webs, (c) a framed static net system for capturing the on-going debris. Various simulated demonstration cases include symmetric and asymmetric (off-set) collisions of the ejected webs with the single and multiple obstacles, collision of the single and multiple debris with the stationary webs, cases of significant impacts, leading to the failure/rupture of the web. In all cases we were able to assess the dynamical parameters of the system and observe the influence of various operational parameters on the dynamics of the post-collision processes. These competing models are then used to study dynamics of the deployment of the net systems and their interaction with the capturing objects. A special attention is given to the biologically inspired nets, resembling with their shapes the spider webs. The dynamic analysis is complemented with the analysis of the stresses in the webs, used in various designs. Various study cases are illustrated with the animations of the representative cases in Virtual Reality.