Study of hypervelocity meteoroid impact on orbital space stations

Structural damage resulting in hypervelocity impact of a meteorite on a spacecraft is discussed. Of particular interest is the backside spallation caused by such a collision. To treat this phenomenon two numerical schemes were developed in the course of this study to compute the elastic-plastic flow fracture of a solid. The numerical schemes are a five-point finite difference scheme and a four-node finite element scheme. The four-node finite element scheme proved to be less sensitive to the type of boundary conditions and loadings. Although further development work is needed to improve the program versatility (generalization of the network topology, secondary storage for large systems, improving of the coding to reduce the run time, etc.), the basic framework is provided for a utilitarian computer program which may be used in a wide variety of situations. Analytic results showing the program output are given for several test cases.