ADVANCED ALL-METAL ORBITAL DEBRIS SHIELD PERFORMANCE AT 7 TO 17 KM S/

Increasing demands on orbital debris shielding systems have spurred ef forts to develop shields that are more efficient than the standard sin gle-bumper system. For example, for a given total bumper mass, experim ents at velocities near 7 km/s have shown that a multiple-bumper syste m is more efficient than a single bumper in preventing wall perforatio n. However, the performance of multiple bumper systems at velocities a bove 7 km/s is unknown. To address this problem, the cadmium surrogate -material technique described by Schmidt et al. [1] has been extended to two dual bumper systems. A complete dimensional analysis is develop ed to include similarity requirements for the intermediate layers. Res ults of experiments, for impact angles of 0 degrees and 45 degrees, ar e presented and compared to those for single bumpers, along with limit ed results for an equal-mass four-bumper shield. Surprisingly, for sca led velocities near 16 km/s at normal incidence, a single bumper defea ts impactors approximately 30% larger in diameter than multiple bumper s of the same total areal density.