Preliminary Study on Wood Stuffed Shield Configuration

As an effort to find a lighter shield, the wood stuffed shield was proposed in this paper based on the wood properties such as low density, low cost, high yield strength when the strain rate is high. Hypervelocity impact tests (Ф=5.5mm, V=4.79 km/s∼4.96 km/s) were carried out to compare the shielding capabilities of the pinewood stuffed shield, aluminum triple-wall shield and Nextel/Kevlar fabric stuffed shield with the same areal density. It was found in all the tests that a perforation with diameter of 2.0 mm was formed in the rear plate of the aluminum triple-wall shield. No perforation but slight deformation was found in the rear plates of both pinewood stuffed shield and Nextel /Kevlar fabric stuffed shield. The height of the deformation on the rear plates of the pinewood stuffed shield was 1.99mmm, and that on the Nextel/Kevlar fabric stuffed shield was 2.01 mm. Results show that, with the same areal density, the shielding capability of the wood stuffed shield is greater than that of the aluminum triple-wall shield and is similar to that of Nextel /Kevlar fabric stuffed shield which is widely used on the spacecraft. To explore the reason why the shielding capability of the wood stuffed shield is prominent, the SPH (smoothed particle hydrodynamic) simulation on the glass-epoxy stuffed shield was carried out.