SATISFYING STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY REQUIREMENTS VIA AN INTEGRATED ANALYSIS AND TEST PROGRAM

摘要

Because of the catastrophic nature of failures, structural integrity is a key element of the flight verification process for space systems. However, the manufacturing, deployment, and operation of a space vehicle introduce unique and diverse loads and environments that are challenging to fully simulate in a practical test program. Thus, the structural integrity verification process comprises a series of discrete checks to fully validate a launch. Test and analysis have critical and complementary roles in this process. Recent trends in the aerospace industry, however, have weakened the integration between analysis and test, leading to various "escapes" in the qualification of space flight hardware. To address these issues, it is instructive to revisit some basic tenets of structural integrity in the context of modern computational capabilities. Thus, this paper attempts to break down the specific goals of a structural integrity verification program considering the specific roles of analysis and test. This will lead into a discussion of how and why the integration of these critical assessment methods can lead to an efficient and reliable structural verification program.