Measurement of mass, spray angle and velocity distribution of fragment cloud

Space debris has monotonously increased since space development started all over the world. Although International Space Station (ISS) is under construction, we still have a problem of a collision with orbital debris, average relative impact velocity of which is 8.7 km/sec. Therefore the study of the bumper shields against space debris impacts is very important. A performance of the bumper shields depends on generating small fragments and scattering them widely to disperse their kinetic energy. The mass, the spray angle and the velocity distribution of the fragments are necessary to construct the kinetic energy distribution. The purpose of this study is construction of the mass, the spray angle, and the velocity distribution based on the state of the fragment cloud generated after the first bumper shield impact. The mass and the spray angle distribution were made by captured fragments, and the velocity distribution was constructed by making the three dimensional distribution of the fragment cloud using flash X-ray. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.