Designing of Conical Surface Configuration for the Probe-cone Docking Mechanism Facing to Mini-Spacecraft

With mankind ceaselessly breaking new ground in the field of space, the growing demands for autonomous on-orbit servicing are putting forward higher requirements to the autonomy, diversity, robustness, reliability and the overall performance of the space rendezvous and docking mechanism. To ensure high success rate and reliability of the spacecraft docking process in space, attentions should be paid on the design, development and test of the docking mechanism. Focusing on the probe-cone docking mechanism utilized on mini-spacecraft for On-Orbit Servicing (OOS), a new design objective of docking cone is presented in this paper. The impact process is simulated using the explicit finite element code, ANSYS/LS-DYNA, and the influence of the docking mechanism on the process is investigated with the kinematical simulation. In addition, on the basis of above simulation analyses, the innovational design technique of docking cone is studied and a new satisfied docking cone is obtained. The results show that the integrated performance of the whole mechanism can meet the capturing requirements of the design objective.