Measuring Structural Flexure to Improve Precision Tracking

摘要

Ship flexure is currently an uncompensated phenomenon that is accounted for in system error budgets without apparent compromise of system performance. However, upcoming system performance requirements may not be able to absorb ship flexure errors. Analyses have been performed throughout the AEGIS development program to determine the magnitude of ship flexure which predicted several milliradians of flexure between arrays under temperature loading, but analysis should be validated by test and measurement. Flexure has been measured in other ship classes; however, none of these results can be directly applied to AEGIS. We describe ways of conducting a test to effectively measure the magnitude of ship flexure using current technology and validate predictive models. A secondary goal of measurements would be to allow us to evaluate these new technology systems for possible use in measuring static and dynamic flexure for compensation during tactical combat system operation and thereby improve the accuracy of intercepts and other engagements.