Citation: Yue, S.; Li, M.; Zhao, Z.; Du,
Z.; Wu, C.; Zhang, Q. Parameter
Analysis and Experiment Validation
of Deployment Characteristics of a
Rectangular Tether-Net. Aerospace
2023, 10, 115. https://doi.org/
10.3390/aerospace10020115
Academic Editors: Mikhail
Ovchinnikov and Dmitry Roldugin
Received: 12 December 2022
Revised: 22 January 2023
Accepted: 24 January 2023
Published: 25 January 2023
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
Article
Parameter Analysis and Experiment Validation of Deployment
Characteristics of a Rectangular Tether-Net
Shuai Yue
1,
*, Mengsheng Li
1
, Zhen Zhao
2
, Zhonghua Du
1
, Chunbo Wu
1
and Qingzhan Zhang
2
1
School of Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China
2
Aerospace System Engineering Shanghai, Shanghai 201109, China
* Correspondence: yueshuai@njust.edu.cn
Abstract:
Tether-nets in space applications are flexible capture systems for removing space debris. A
new, low-mass, rectangular tether-net deployed by ten towing blocks is proposed in this paper for
the purpose of capturing the main body of satellites. The dynamic model of a rectangular tether-net
during the deployment process was established. The accuracy of the simulation model was validated
by comparing it with on-ground experiments. In addition, the influence of towing block mass and
launch speed on the maximum deployment area and the deployment lengths of the long side and
short side of the rectangular tether-net were systematically analyzed. The results show that the
tether-net configuration and launch distance of the simulations were consistent with those of the
experiments, demonstrating the good accuracy of the simulation model. Moreover, with the increase
in towing block mass, the maximum deployment area and deployment lengths of both sides of
the rectangular tether-net showed a gradually increasing tendence, while the recoil impulse and
structural weight increased. When the launch speed of the towing blocks increased, the maximum
deployment area and deployment lengths increased significantly and further caused the extension of
the shape-preserving distance.
Keywords:
rectangular tether-net; dynamic model; flexible capture system; deployment characteristics
1. Introduction
With space exploration speeding up, the number of on-orbit satellites increases, which
increases the risk of spacecrafts being impacted by space debris. According to the informa-
tion released by the European Space Agency (ESA) at the end of 2020, over 34,000 space
debris pieces were greater than 10 cm in size; over 900,000 space debris pieces were in the
range of [1 cm, 10 cm]; and around 130 million space debris pieces were between 0.1 cm
and 1 cm in orbit [
1
]. By the end of 2014, over 240 on-orbit spacecraft carrier explosions
or impact events had occurred. With the increase in these explosions and disintegration
events, more space debris is generated [
2
]. To remove space debris, many active captur-
ing methods have been proposed. According to their working principles and structural
characteristics, these methods can be divided into rigid capturing means [
3
,
4
] and flexible
capturing means [
5
,
6
]. Compared with traditional rigid capture, tether-net systems for
space applications possess the features small volume, light weight and longer operating
distance [7], which are useful, as well as practical, for capturing space debris [8].
Research on tether-nets has gained fruitful results. Gao et al. [
9
] established the finite
element model of a tether-net using mass–spring–damper elements. The flexible net was
modelled as a series of collected semi-damp springs with mass lumped at appropriate
nodes. The motion equations of each tether node were developed considering internal
elastic force and external forces. Shan et al. [
10
] established a tether-net dynamic model
based on the absolute nodal coordinate method (ANCF). They found that the ANCF model
can describe the flexibility of a tether-net better than the mass–spring–damper model, but it
requires more calculation time. In addition, compared with the results of the microgravity
Aerospace 2023, 10, 115. https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace10020115 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/aerospace
