Speaker
Description
Design-for-demise (D4D) looks at technical solutions to reduce the casualty risk on ground of re-entering satellites and their components by promoting demise during atmospheric re-entry. Earlier studies have shown that the early release of the satellite structure will also help to improve the overall demise of the satellite. In order to understand betterbetter understand the behaviour of current joining technologies and how to improve them for demise, tests have been performed in a high enthalpy wind tunnel and static heat chambers. A broad range of samples were prepared and tested under a range of conditions in order to broaden the current understanding. A broadwide range of phenomena was exhibited by the samples and a number of different failure scenarios were seen to be dependent upon technologies tested, heat flux profiles, and the mechanical loads, among other influencing factors. These results are currently being fed into developments of new demisable joining technologies which will undergo bread boarding development and testing similar to the earlier phase. These activities as a whole both help us to understand the processes of demise and also will lead to more informed decisions in terms of increasing the altitude at which break-up occurs and reducing on-ground casualty risk.
