Drop Tower Experiment to Study the Effect of Microgravity on Friction Behavior: Experimental Set-up and Preliminary Results

This paper refers to studying the effect of microgravity on the friction behavior of friction units and to further analyzing the influencing mechanism. The potential factors affecting the friction behavior of the moving joints of space mechanisms in microgravity environment were analyzed. A friction apparatus was designed and manufactured by reducing the complexity and costs. A microgravity test program was designed and performed using the Beijing Drop Tower platform with designing three positioning styles for the friction apparatus by changing the relationship between the normal load and gravity. For each positioning style of the friction apparatus, the friction behavior of friction unit in gravity and microgravity environment was compared. It was found that microgravity can not only change the value of friction, but also affect its dynamic characteristics. For different positioning styles of the friction apparatus, the influencing mechanism of microgravity on friction behavior was different. The normal load or the relative position between the connected bodies of the friction unit could be changed by microgravity, resulting in that the friction behavior was different from that in gravity environment.