Molecular Dynamics Study of Impact Velocity Dependence of Structure of Debris Cloud under Hyper Velocity Impact

Abstract

A molecular dynamics simulation is carried out to study thehyper-velocity impact fracture at a space debris' attack to a man-madesatellite. A target-projectile system is modeled as aface-center-cubic system which consists of aluminum atoms. Morse potential is adopted as the interatomic potential. Impact velocity dependence of distribution of debris clouds is studied in the different velocity conditions. As a result, the structure of debriscloud of the case of 7km/s impact differs from that of 12km/s. Thesize of fragment of the debris clouds becomes smaller with increasing impact velocity. The axial component of debris cloud velocities areshown to decrease as target thickness-projectile diameter ratio t/D is increased. These results qualitatively agree well with anexperimental result.