Preliminary study on shielding performance of debris shield with the rear wall combining light materials and an aluminum plate

Several kinds of shields such as Whipple shield, stuffed shield and multiple-wall shield were developed to defend from orbital debris impacting on spacecraft. The shielding performance of these shields was improved notably by changing the properties of bumper or stuffed wall. This work focuses on a new way to improve shielding performance by using a combination of light material attached to a rear aluminum wall instead of a single aluminum wall with the same areal density. Hypervelocity impact tests were performed to evaluate the new shielding concepts using aluminum spherical projectiles with 5.0 mm diameter at impact velocity ranging from 4.62 km/s to 4.90 km/s. The targets were three kinds of shields (aerogel/fiberglass composite, wood plate, or polyurethane foam plate attached to the rear aluminum walls in the shields individually), and Whipple shield with the same areal density. Test results showed that the shielding performances of these three kinds of shields are better than that of Whipple shield, based on the reduced damage on the rear wall. The advantage of combined wall using light materials attached to an aluminum plate to replace a single aluminum plate in traditional shield was verified preliminarily, and a feasible way was put forward to improve the shielding performance of debris shield in this paper.