A density approach for debris cloud propagation based on superimposed king-hele method

With the increasing space activities, space objects are growing rapidly and the probability of collisions in space grows. Besides, large scale constellations have developed rapidly. All these threaten the sustainability of the space environment. One way of establishing the density evolution model is to integrate all fragments trajectories, and then extract statistical information through Monte Carlo simulations, so that the spatial density of the fragments can be obtained. However, it is inapplicable for large constellations or debris clouds because of large computational effort. Inspired by the traditional method for hydrodynamics, where the continuity equation is used to associate the fluid density with its velocity, the central idea of this work is to model the fragments as a fluid with continuous properties. Combined with the superimposed King-Hele method, the continuity equation is solved by numerical approach. Results with different predefined parameters are shown and analysed to derive how the parameters influence the density evolution.