Hypervelocity impact behavior of projectile penetration on spacecraft structure: A review

Abstract

Spacecraft structure has been protected against the space debris impact by using a bumper plate and main plate. When the debris impacts a thin bumper plate at hypervelocity, debris clouds form and the bumper cause the fragment to shatter and reduces the fragment's ability to penetrate the main structure. The size of the hole in the bumper plate indicates the level of damage to the primary structure. The projectile material's mass in the cloud creates a considerable ballistic threat to the main structure. Various stages of the penetration process have been discussed. The empirical and approximate theoretical formulations created to characterize many features of hypervelocity impact when the projectile and some of the target materials undergo enormous plastic deformation, breakdown, melting, or vaporization are reviewed. For the numerical simulation of hypervelocity impact of space debris on spacecraft structure, Johnson-Cook material and failure model along with Mie-Gruneisen equation of state are used. For the hypervelocity impact experiment, a two-stage light gas gun is mostly preferred.