Friction Characteristics of Soft Landing System of Lunar Lander
- Paper number
IAC-11,A3,2.P,6,x9993
- Author
Dr. Min Luo, China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), China
- Coauthor
Mr. Fuming Zeng, Beijing Institute of Spacecraft System Engineering, China
- Coauthor
Mr. Jianzhong Yang, China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), China
- Year
2011
- Abstract
Lunar landing system consists of four landing gears, which are installed at the bottom of Lunar Lander for equipment protection. The energy absorbers in the gear will be compressed to dissipate kinetic energy of Lunar Lander by means of plastic deformation during the landing process. During this process, friction in the landing gear can significantly affect the energy absorption and the load of landing system, which should be calculated accurately for the landing gear design. In order to study the friction characteristics of the landing gear, an experiment setup was presented in this paper. Various types of load which may occur in the landing process were reproduced in the experiment. And the friction force of landing gear under each loading condition was measured. Then, a theoretical model of landing gear was proposed. Friction factors under different loading conditions were obtained from the theoretical analysis with experimental data. At last, based on the results of experiments and theoretical model, an ADAMS model of Lunar Lander with soft landing system was built. The effects of the friction on the energy absorption and loads during the landing gear working process were analyzed. The experimental results from these works demonstrate that the existing soft landing gear has excellent lubrication efficiency with a stable friction factor. The simulation results show that the friction energy accounts for 10\% of the whole energy absorption, which has an obviously effect on the performance of soft landing system. Finally, in this study, we present an effective method to evaluate the friction characteristics of Lunar landing system, and provide important experimental data to the designer. Furthermore, the experiment method and analysis model would provide a helpful reference for the friction analysis of other spacecraft mechanism.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)