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Full-Text Articles in Physics
Perspectives On The Distributions Of Esd Breakdowns For Spacecraft Charging Applications, Allen Andersen, Krysta Moser, Jr Dennison
Perspectives On The Distributions Of Esd Breakdowns For Spacecraft Charging Applications, Allen Andersen, Krysta Moser, Jr Dennison
Journal Articles
Electrostatic discharge (ESD) continues to pose significant risks to space missions despite decades of intense study. Tabulated values of material breakdown strength used in spacecraft charging models are often based on cursory measurements that may not be fully relevant to a given mission. Materials physics offers insight into the pertinent variables that affect breakdown and how to address them experimentally for spacecraft applications. We present measured distributions of ESD data across several test configurations for three polymeric materials that, taken together, begin to provide an understanding of how to estimate the likelihood of ESD events over a spacecraft’s mission lifetime. …
Dependence Of Electrostatic Field Strength On Voltage Ramp Rate For Spacecraft Materials, Krysta Moser, Allen Andersen, Jr Dennison
Dependence Of Electrostatic Field Strength On Voltage Ramp Rate For Spacecraft Materials, Krysta Moser, Allen Andersen, Jr Dennison
Journal Articles
This work investigated the dependence of electrostatic field strength for spacecraft materials on voltage ramp rate, by applying an increasing incremental electrostatic field until electrostatic breakdown occurred. Tests on Kapton E found that at ramp rates two or three orders of magnitude lower than the maximum recommended rate, the electrostatic breakdown field, FESD was lower by a factor of two or more. This suggests that tabulated values of FESD, which have been used by the spacecraft charging community, could substantially overestimate FESD in common slowly evolving spacecraft situations. This study expanded these ramp rate tests to include a wider range …
Electrostatic Discharge And Endurance Time Measurements Of Spacecraft Materials: A Defect-Driven Dynamic Model, Allen Andersen, Jr Dennison, Alec Sim, Charles Sim
Electrostatic Discharge And Endurance Time Measurements Of Spacecraft Materials: A Defect-Driven Dynamic Model, Allen Andersen, Jr Dennison, Alec Sim, Charles Sim
Journal Articles
Electrostatic breakdown leads to the majority of anomalies and failures attributed to spacecraft interactions with the plasma space environment. It is therefore critical to understand how electrostatic field strength (FESD) of spacecraft materials varies due to environmental conditions such as duration of applied electric field, rate of field change, history of exposure to high fields, and temperature. We have developed a dual-defect, thermodynamic, mean-field trapping model in terms of recoverable and irrecoverable defect modes to predict probabilities of breakdown. Fits to a variety of measurements of the dependence of FESD of insulating polymers on endurance time, voltage …