The Design and Analysis of Light Passive Air-Bearing Simulator

The development of space vehicles requires to build a micro-low gravity environment on the ground to perform full physical movement, for verifying the correctness of the design and implementation of the vehicle. As an economical simulator, air-bearing simulator is widely applied in space microgravity simulation. The air bearing simulator is based on compressed gas to float the simulator on the plane to achieve the effectiveness of micro-friction. The air-bearing simulator is equipped with a compressed gas system to supply gas film to the air-bearing, at the same time to provide medium for the air nozzle to change the orbit. The two-stage decompression pipelines and pneumatic components of the compressed gas supply system make the simulator heavier. It brings a lot of inconvenience for gas supply safety and periodic calibration of pneumatic components. In this paper, the air film is constructed by the horizontal platform. The bottom surface between the simulator and platform is smooth and solid. The high thrust fans are optimized as the power source for simulator to push the simulator to perform trajectory and attitude tracking motions. The stackable structure is adopted to build the multi-load and multi-sensor system so as to realize the purpose of constructing the test device quickly. The order tracking tests of position and posture measurement based on visual measuring are performed on the passive air-bearing test bench. The command curves are compared with the closed-loop curve of simulator motion driven by the actual power fans to verify the effectiveness of the simulator design and simulation. It is of great significance to the design of light space microgravity simulator.