Damping Measurement and Solar Radiation Pressure Validation of Flexible, High Area-To-Mass Ratio Debris Model

Multilayer insulation (MLI) is thought to be a new type of space debris located in near geosynchronous orbit (GEO). Observation data indicates that these objects exhibit reflection properties and high area-to-mass (HAMR) ratio. Moreover, their area-to-mass (AMR) ratio changes over time, suggesting a high level of flexibility due to extremely low structural strength. As a result, the long term orbital dynamics and rapid attitude motion are substantially affected by GEO environmental perturbations. Previous work by the authors effectively modelled the flexible debris using multibody dynamics. This paper presents a methodology to determine the dynamic properties of thin membranes with the aim to validate the deformation of the flexible model. Experiments are performed in a high-vacuum chamber (10-4 mbar) to significantly decrease air friction inside, which a thin membrane is hinged at one end but free at the others. A free motion test is used to determine the damping characteristics and natural frequency of the thin membrane via logarithmic decrement and frequency response. The membrane is allowed to swing freely in the chamber and the motion is tracked by a static camera. The motion is tracked through an optical camera, and a Kalman filter technique is implemented in the tracking algorithm to reduce noise and increase the tracking accuracy of the oscillating motion. Then, the effect of the solar radiation pressure of the thin membrane is investigated: a high power spotlight (500-2000 W) is used to illuminate the sample and any displacement of the thin membrane is measured by means of a high-resolution laser sensor. Analytic methods from the natural frequency response and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) including multibody simulations of both experimental setups are used for the validation of the flexible model by comparing with the experimental results of amplitude decay, natural frequencies and deformation. The experimental results show good agreement with finite element methods.

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