New Satellite Fragmentation Model Based upon Low-Velocity and Hypervelocity Impacts

This paper summarizes tests to investigate the outcome of low-velocity and hypervelocity impacts on two identical target micro-satellites. The targets were 15cm × 15cm × 15cm in size and 740g in mass. One test was performed using a 39-g aluminum alloy sphere at a speed of 1.45km/s while the other was performed using a 4-g aluminum alloy sphere at a speed of 4.44km/s. The targets were completely fragmented after both tests. This paper also proposes a new approach to improve the calculation of cross-sectional area of fragments and a new technique for modeling the area-to-mass ratio distribution of fragments. It can be concluded that the area-to-mass ratio distribution model resulting from the proposed methods fits very well to the fragments observed with the micro-satellite impact tests.