The mechanical characteristics and control of high temperature superconducting magnetic docking mechanism

The space docking mechanism is one of the important ways to set up a space station, which is an important platform to explore the space. The traditional docking mechanism has achieved a series of docking missions, but it has the problems of large impact and plume pollution, which has the risk to affect the normal work of high precise instrument and equipment installed on spacecraft. In order to solve the drawback of the traditional docking mechanism, the high temperature superconducting magnetic docking mechanism (a novel docking mechanism) consisting of a high temperature superconductor (HTS) bulk installed on a target spacecraft module and an electromagnet installed on a tracking spacecraft module is proposed to be designed based on the flux pinning effect of a HTS. The diamagnetic and trapped magnetic field characteristics of a HTS can be considered to propose an equivalent method of processing HTS (equivalent processing method). Moreover, the equivalent processing method is verified by way of experiment. The mechanical characteristics of the high temperature superconducting magnetic docking mechanism in the case of different parameters are studied using the equivalent processing method. Based on the mechanical characteristics, the dynamic model of the novel docking mechanism is established in order to analyze the dynamic response in the case of different control laws. Furthermore, the docking performance of the high temperature superconducting magnetic docking mechanism is evaluated based on three indicators, that is, maximum overshoot, peak time, and adjustment time.