RESPONSE OF SPACE STRUCTURES TO ORBITAL DEBRIS PARTICLE IMPACT

All long-duration space and aerospace support and transportation systems, such as the Space Station Freedom and the Space Shuttle, are susceptible to impacts by pieces of orbital debris. These impacts occur at high speeds and can damage the flight-critical systems of such spacecraft. Therefore, the design of a structure that will be exposed to a hazardous orbital debris environment must address the possibility of such hypervelocity impacts and their effect on the integrity of the entire structural system. A technique is developed for analyzing the response of dual-wall structures to oblique hypervelocity projectile impact. Ballistic limit curves that predict the potential of an impacting projectile to perforate the main wall of a dual-wall structural system are obtained using the technique and are compared against experimentally derived curves. Comparisons are performed for a variety of impact velocities, trajectory obliquities and projectile masses. It is shown that the results obtained using the technique developed herein compare very well with experimental results.