Numerical and experimental investigation on the shock mitigation of satellite-rocket separation

The shock mitigation technique (SMT) for the satellite-rocket separation has always been one of the hot topics in the field of aerospace. Acoustic Black Hole (ABH) phenomenon which is discovered in recent years refers to the phenomenon of the energy focalization when the stress wave propagates in the plate structure with variable thickness. The ABH and its non-ideal form have received extensive attention and research since they were put forward. Combining the theory of non-ideal ABH with the SMT of satellite-rocket separation, this paper presents a new design of the satellite joint to decrease the satellite-rocket separation shock. At first, the propagation characteristics of stress wave in the thin plate structures with non-ideal ABH are deduced, and the key law affecting the energy attenuation is found. And then, an improved model for the standard satellite joint is proposed, and both the standard and improved models are simplified. What's more, the finite element (FE) models of the simplified satellite joints are established and the shock mitigation (SM) effect is numerically verified with the explicit dynamic code LS-DYNA. At last, the near-field and the whole satellite separation shock experiments are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the SM scheme. The results got in this paper indicate that the SM design based on the non-ideal ABH theory can effectively reduce the satellite-rocket separation shock.