On the effect of projectile material on damage induced to aluminum target under hypervelocity impact

Abstract

The ongoing development of composite materials in spacecraft and satellite structures leads to increasing number of polymerical debris navigating in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). A few examples of on-ground tests performed at Thiot Ingénierie Shock Physics Laboratory have highlighted larger damages when impact by polymerical projectile in comparison with metal vs metal impact scenario. The observed phenomena could not only be explained by pure mechanical kinetic effects and may be the result of potential solid/gas phase change or an exothermic reaction between polymer elements and metallic ones leading to a strong energy release. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effect of projectile material on debris cloud expansion, on the damage induced to a target in order to identify the source of the observed phenomena. An experimental configuration is therefore proposed comparing the damage induced by aluminum and polymeric material projectile at similar kinetic energy on single wall and Whipple shield aluminum targets at velocities up to 5.4 km/s. This database will be used to feed numerical simulation with appropriate models.