Characteristics of Polyimide Debris Clouds Produced by Hypervelocity Impact

Polyimide is a typical complex high-molecular polymer of imide monomers, which is widely used in the manufacture of parts for aerospace engineering. The hypervelocity impacts between the spacecraft and orbital debris can induce great damage to the spacecraft. In order to improve the safety of spacecraft, the characteristics of polyimide debris clouds produced by hypervelocity impact should be studied. Firstly, a Mie-Grüneisen equation of state based on the shock adiabat for polyimide, which describes the mechanical behavior in the numerical simulation, was obtained from hypervelocity impact experiments, then a 3-dimentional smoothed particle hydrodynamics program was compiled to numerically simulate the hypervelocity impact between aluminum projectiles (orbital debris) and polyimide targets with different impact velocities (3 km/s, 5 km/s, 8 km/s) and angles (0°, 30°, 45°, 60°), finally typical shapes of debris clouds produced in different impact velocities and angles were collected from simulation results, the characteristics of which were systemically discussed. © 2019 Editorial Department of Journal of Beijing Institute of Technology.