Drop Tower Experiment to Study the Effect of Microgravity on Friction Behavior: Experimental Set-up and Preliminary Resu
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Drop Tower Experiment to Study the Effect of Microgravity on Friction Behavior: Experimental Set-up and Preliminary Results Yong Duan 1 & Shengguan Qu 1 & Chao Yang 1 & Xiaoqiang Li 1 & Fucai Liu 2 Received: 17 June 2020 / Accepted: 27 September 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract This paper refers to studying the effect of microgravity on the friction behavior of friction units and to further analyzing the influencing mechanism. The potential factors affecting the friction behavior of the moving joints of space mechanisms in microgravity environment were analyzed. A friction apparatus was designed and manufactured by reducing the complexity and costs. A microgravity test program was designed and performed using the Beijing Drop Tower platform with designing three positioning styles for the friction apparatus by changing the relationship between the normal load and gravity. For each positioning style of the friction apparatus, the friction behavior of friction unit in gravity and microgravity environment was compared. It was found that microgravity can not only change the value of friction, but also affect its dynamic characteristics. For different positioning styles of the friction apparatus, the influencing mechanism of microgravity on friction behavior was different. The normal load or the relative position between the connected bodies of the friction unit could be changed by microgravity, resulting in that the friction behavior was different from that in gravity environment. Keywords Drop tower . Friction apparatus . Friction behavior . Influencing mechanism . Microgravity
Introduction With the increasing activities for the exploration of the moon, Mars, and other planets and the expansion of extraterrestrial orbital activity, more and more space devices are demanded to operate in outer space. These devices incorporate a variety of friction units, such as hinges, manipulators with their own drive devices, deployment devices, joints of solar batteries and antennas etc. (Bronovets et al. 2009). All of these friction units, acting as the basic elements for the space devices to achieve various motion functions, involve rotational or translational motion, and are required to be operated with total reliability.
* Shengguan Qu [email protected] Yong Duan [email protected] 1
School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, Guangdong, China
2
Key Lab of Industrial Computer Control Engineering of Hebei Province, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao 066004, China
The extreme outer-space environment, including high vacuum, radiation, ultra low and high temperature, and the absence of oxygen, can alter the characteristics of friction unit materials and their performance, leading to the malfunction or even prematurely failure of the friction units (Lv et al. 2015; Yarosh et al. 2002). In recent decades, many scholars have conducted a lot of research to meet the exacting demands of that environment, and the performance and reliability of
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