Experimental fragments distributions for thin aluminium plates subjected to hypervelocity impacts

Hypervelocity impacts involving big objects in space are expected to occur more frequently in the next years, generating a significant number of new debris. In this context, understanding the physical mechanisms involved in orbital collisions and modelling space debris production after fragmentation are fundamental prerequisites to predict the long-term evolution of the space debris environment. In this work we present impact experiments on aluminium thin plates with the purpose to evaluate the effect of impact velocity and target thickness on the fragments generation. Results are presented as cumulative characteristic length distributions and shapes distributions. It is shown that characteristic length distributions can be modelled by a power law similar to the NASA SBM and that shape distributions are independent from target thickness and impact velocity.