Characterizing debris clouds created in oblique orbital debris particle impact

The problem of pollution within Earth's orbital environment has gained considerable recognition over the past decades. Determining adequate passive protection schemes is an unending process that attempts to meet different objectives for widely varying types of missions. Significant amounts of resources have been expended toward development of numerical and analytical models that model the response of a variety of target systems under high-speed orbital debris impacts. The objective of the study whose results are presented herein was to improve upon an existing oblique hypervelocity impact model that characterizes the various secondary debris clouds created in such an impact. This was accomplished by reducing the model's dependence on empirical user-defined parameters and by correcting an error in one of its equations. Predictions of the improved model are compared with numerical simulations generated during previous impact studies under comparable conditions. It is found that the improved model does a reasonable job of predicting the characteristics of the secondary debris clouds created in an oblique hypervelocity impact.