Effect of Composite Superconductor Structure on Dynamic Properties of Superconducting Interface and Formation in Space Application

A superconducting flux-pinned docking interface (FPDI) offers an important approach to spacecraft assembly, reconfiguration, and short-range formation flying. Although the self-capture ability was primarily presented, the flux-pinned interaction usually shows poor damping behavior, which does not benefit the vibration suppression of the superconducting interface structure subject to external excitation. In this paper, four superconductor structures including composite superconductor structures are proposed to analyze the dynamic process and self-stability of FPDI module. The effect of composite superconductor structures on the docking performance of the module under different field cooling (FC) conditions was investigated. After the FPDI module was in formation, an identical external disturbance was applied to the module to investigate its self-stability under the same FC magnetization condition. Calculating and comparing the damping ratio in different superconductor structures, we found that the FPDI module composed of the composite superconductor structure shows more extraordinary damping properties and self-stability characteristic than that using the conventional superconductor structure.