USING TRANSIENT ANALYSIS TO PREDICT SHOCK RESPONSE FOR COMPONENT FLEXURE DESIGN

摘要

Several components on the Deep Impact spacecraft are susceptible to shock input. They are mounted on flexures for thermal isolation reasons. Preliminary analysis revealed that a traditional "Z" flexure did not provide sufficient shock attenuation. Traditional shock isolators and re-qualifying the components were too costly, so alternate flexure designs were needed to satisfy both thermal isolation and shock attenuation requirements. ATA and BATC utilized component shock test data along with transient analysis using a finite element model (FEM) to predict shock responses in these components and the predicted attenuation due to the flexures. The new flexures designed were developed cost-effectively and quickly using commercial methods and hardware that are available in the public domain. Subsequent shock testing on the first design validated this approach, which was then applied to a second flexure design on a different component. This paper highlights the benefits of this approach, and how the analytic results compare to test data for the development of these flexure systems.