TRANSACTIONS OF THE JAPAN SOCIETY FOR AERONAUTICAL AND SPACE SCIENCES, AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY JAPAN
Online ISSN : 1884-0485
ISSN-L : 1884-0485
Numerical Simulation of Tape Tether Deployment from a Storage Container
Hirohisa KOJIMAPavel TRIVAILOTakeo WATANABEHironori FUJII
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2018 Volume 16 Issue 7 Pages 604-612

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Abstract

In 2010, a bare electro-dynamic tape-tether technology experiment (T-Rex) was carried out on board the sounding rocket S520-25th in order to demonstrate tape tether deployment and the orbital motion limit (OML) theorem. In this mission, the tape tether was stored in and deployed from a storage container by ejecting a daughter component using compressed springs. The designed deployment length of the tape tether was 300 m. However, analysis of the flight data revealed that only 130 m was deployed, which was much less than expected. The main reason for incomplete deployment of the tape tether may be friction between the tape tether and the storage container. In order to design an appropriate storage container and select the spring constant, it is very important to estimate the total energy dispersion of the deployment speed due to friction between the tether and the storage container. In this study, the tape tether is modeled as a multi-particle system, and collisions and friction between the tether and the storage container are considered in estimating the kinetic energy dispersion. The important parameters, such as the coefficients of restitution and friction, are chosen by referring to web data and experimental results, so that we can emulate the behavior of tape tether deployment from the storage container.

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© 2018 The Japan Society for Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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