Prof. Su Zhongqing Secures Highly Competitive Innovation and Technology Fund for Aerospace Technology

Prof. SU Zhongqing, Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Chair Professor of Intelligent Structures and Systems, has been awarded the Innovation and Technology Fund - Innovation and Technology Support Programme (ITF-ITSP) Special Call (Aerospace Technology) research grant of 4.5 million Hong Kong dollars for a large applied research and development (R&D) project.

The project is titled "A “Totally-Additive-Manufacturing”-driven New Sensing Technique for Rapid Health Evaluation of Space Systems Under Hypervelocity Impact of Orbital Junks". As the project investigator, Prof. SU will lead a 3-year project, in partnership with co-investigators from Beijing Institute of Spacecraft Environment Engineering (BISEE) 北京衛星環境工程研究所 of China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) and Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen).

The past decade has witnessed unprecedented prosperity in human’s exploration to outer space. As a result, the near-Earth space, where numerous satellites and space stations orbit, is now cluttered with man-made orbital debris and micrometeoroids (i.e., space junk). Though small, they travel at such high speeds and potentially cause “hypervelocity impact” (HVI) (>4 km/s). It is highly imperative to develop effective sensing approaches to perceive HVI and evaluate system degradation after HVI attacks, whereby to enhance the survivability of damaged spacecraft.

This ITSP project will be an innovative structural health monitoring (SHM) framework, a compact, all-in-one system and a new sensing network coating that all are readily available for immediate applications to orbital spacecraft (e.g., satellites and space stations). Successful installation of the system and implementation of the technique on spacecraft will remarkably minimize the risk of “hypervelocity impact” (HVI) from space junks to the communication satellites and space stations, retrofit existing safety design philosophy, enhance serviceability and extend lifespan of long-service space systems.

ITSP aims to encourage universities funded by the University Grants Committee (UGC) to collaborate with leading research institutes worldwide to conduct more theme-based inter-disciplinary and translational research and development (R&D) work in focused technology areas.