Research On The Designing Of Flexible Wall Facing To The Probe-cone Docking Mechanism Utilized On Medium And Small-sized Spacecraft

The space autonomous docking technology has been greatly promoted as the development of on-orbit services. It needs for universal small docking platform. The buffer system of the docking mechanism is analysed in this article. The content mainly includes the following aspects:Firstly, it describes the development of the docking mechanism early at home and abroad, compares the different adaptabilities of the space missions, and summarizes the on-orbit services technology. It points out that the autonomous docking technology is a development direction and it needs a common docking mechanism with fast and re-used features.Secondly, the article indicates the design principles and tenets to meet the requirements of these small docking mechanisms. A new type of probe-cone docking mechanism with flexible docking cone as buffer system is presented. The impact process of the docking mechanism with common docking cone and thin-plate-combined docking cone is studied, and the dynamic model is established. On this basis, the dynamic equations are solved, and the influence of the parameters with the thin-plate-combined docking cone on the docking process is discussed systemically.Thirdly, the impact process is simulated using the explicit finite element code, ANSYS/LS-DYNA. The finite element results are compared with the theoretical results to examine the reliability of the theoretical analysis. The influence of the thin-wall docking cone on the docking process is studied by FEM in help of the dynamic simulation in detail.Finally, a new impact testing system is designed to study the impact phenomenon of the docking mechanism, and the experimental results validate the theoretical and finite element models further.To sum up, the results show that comparing with the common docking cone, the flexible docking cone can greatly help to reduce the maximum impact force by more than 50%.