DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF THE SEPARATION SYSTEM OF THE INTERNATIONAL BERTHING AND DOCKING MECHANISM

摘要

This paper presents the conceptual design and the analysis of the performance of the separation system of the International Berthing and Docking Mechanism (IBDM), more extensively described in [1]. This separation system is capable of: - Safely deberthing and undocking vehicles weighing 5 to 80 ton - Minimising the angular velocity of the separation vehicle to result in a pure translation. This paper contains the functional requirements of the separation system, the requirements for the separation mechanism, the conceptual design of the separation mechanism and the consequences towards the separation system performance. Extensive analysis has been performed to prove the functionality of this innovative separation system.