China Develops World's Largest Rocket Separation Airbag

China-made ultra-long large-diameter high-pressure airbags, the world's largest and most pressure-resistant products of their type, have passed a pre-acceptance test.

The inspection test was undertaken by the general design department's third office of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC).

The separation airbag is an initiating explosive device for vertical separation of the launch vehicle fairing during satellite launches.

Hu Zhenxing, the project head, explained the working mechanism of the airbag.

He said that the tubular-shaped airbag contains an initiating explosive device. In flight, the airbag is flat and tightly pressed by the two half covers of the fairing.

When the fairing separates, the explosion of the initiating explosive device leads to a bulge in the airbag and the connection structure of the two half covers of the fairing begin to separate, releasing the satellite.

Compared to the current airbags used in carrier rockets, the newly developed model is five times longer and three times as wide which improves the pressure resistance by three-fold.

Future heavy carrier rockets will be equipped with larger and heavier fairings to guarantee a stronger stress to resist their separating force.

In other words, a large airbag can encircle the fairing at the middle part and at the same time, must be strong enough to withstand the pressure of two large fairings and the impact of explosion.

According to Hu, the airbag needed to break through two technical bottlenecks — the stable preparation technology of large-diameter ultra-long airbags and the material selection and weaving technology of high-pressure airbags.

The ultra-long large-diameter high-pressure airbag is currently the largest in the world. Its successful development has greatly improved the technical level of China's airbag separation device, and has provided technical support for the high-safety flat-spray separation of large-scale fairings of heavy launch vehicles in China. 

(Executive editor: Hao Wen)