Hypervelocity impact on flexible curable composites and pure fabric layer bumpers for inflatable space structures

Demands for large space structures recently increased in accordance with the growth of space applications for micro-gravity research and space travel. To satisfy growing demand, inflatable structures have been developed. For hypervelocity impact protection from micrometeoroid and orbital debris with enough structural flexibility to be applied to an inflatable space structure, a Multi-shock shield was developed and adopted. However, the multi-layered ceramic fabric bumper of the Multi-shock shield is inferior to the bumper of the conventional stuffed Whipple shield with respect to its hypervelocity impact protection performance. In this study, the applicability of directly curable carbon, Zylon and Twaron composites as a front bumper of the hypervelocity impact shield was examined through 22 experiments involving a pure fabric layer bumper. Through the experiments, it was found that directly curable composites can be more effectively used as a bumper of hypervelocity shield than pure fabric layers.