Predicting the Perforation Response of Honeycomb Sandwich Panels Using Ballistic Limit Equations

摘要

Man-made debris from previous spacecraft missions poses a serious threat to spacecraft that are launched tonoperate in Earth orbit because it can strike such spacecraft at extremely high velocities and consequently damagenmission-critical systems.Most satellites are constructedwith honeycomb sandwich panels as their primary structuralnelements. To be able to perform a risk analysis, it is important to know, in the event of such a meteoroid or orbitalndebris particle impact, whether or not the impacting particle or parts thereof will exit the rear of the sandwich panel.nArecently developed set of ballistic limit equations for two different types of honeycomb sandwich panels are studiednto determine howwell they performwhen they are applied to systems that are outside of the database thatwas used tondevelop them. It was found that these ballistic limit equations are fairly conservative; they successfully predictednsandwich panel perforation in nearly all of the tests that resulted in perforation,while allowing approximately half ofnthe nonperforating tests to be incorrectly labeled as tests with a perforation. This indicates the likelihood that use ofnthese equations in design applications could result in overly robust shielding hardware.