How the lowly egg could help protect future spacecraft
Popular Science...
The humble egg is often a symbol of fragility, but there is strength in numbers. According to, egg-based geometry may be sturdy enough to protect future generations of astronauts from the ever-growing threat of space debris.
Around one million pieces of junk larger than one centimeter currently orbit the Earth, thanks to decades of space travel, rocket launches, and satellite deployments. Each tiny trash bit travels at roughly 17,400 miles per hour, making them immensely dangerous for ongoing missions and exploration efforts. International agencies are now monitoring the existing space trash, while researchers test methods to clean up the problem. However,there is still a growing need to protect both people and property above everyone’s heads. And that’s where eggs come into play.
“A single eggshell breaks easily under local force, but the protection mechanism of the eggshell array is completely different,” Yuxin Wang, an engineer at Dalian University of Technology, explained in a statement.
As Wang and his colleagues demonstrate in a study published today in the Journal of Applied Physics, aluminum eggshell shaped designs arrayed together cooperatively deform in a way that distributes energy across a larger structure, making the overall surface a promising addition in reinforced shielding. These are even stronger when each “egg” in Wang’s prototypes were filled with water. Good ol’ H2O then dampened impact shock waves through the eggs.
Engineers tested both 3D printed designs and ran computer simulations for standard aluminum plates, water-filled aluminum spheres placed between flat plates, and the novel eggshell arrays. The sandwiched spheres performed the best—reducing a projectile’s impact velocity by almost 65 percent, compared to 51 percent from just the plates. The most optimized iterations also included placing the egg models upright so that their narrowed end touches the top aluminum plate.
The team still needs to optimize the metamaterial’s filling and overall geometry, along the metal thickness and aspect ratios. That said, egg-ified shielding may one day be a common addition to vehicles and satellites destined for low Earth orbit.
“This work demonstrates that bionic, lightweight metastructures are a promising route for hypervelocity-impact protection,” said Wang.
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