This paper presents recent results in an ongoing effort to understand and develop techniques to process launch vehicle data, which is extremely challenging for modal parameter identification. The primary source of difficulty is due to the nonstationary nature of the situation. The system is changing, the environment is not steady, and there is an active control system operating. Hence, the primary tool for producing clean operational results (significant data lengths and data averaging) is not available to the user. This work reported herein uses a correlation-based two step operational modal analysis approach to process the relevant data sets for understanding and development of processes. A significant drawback for such processing of short time histories is a series of beating phenomena due to the inability to average out random modal excitations. A recursive correlation process coupled to a new convergence metric (designed to mitigate the beating phenomena) is the object of this study. It has been found in limited studies that this process creates clean modal frequency estimates but numerically alters the damping.
KEYWORDS
Operational Modal Analysis, Signal Processing, Hilbert Transform, Correlation Function, Damping Estimation
INTRODUCTIONThe spacecraft launch environment is a highly complex and non-stationary event that is characterized by high amplitude input forces, highly variable loads, a wide spectrum of responses, constantly changing vehicle mass, active control interactions, staging, and limited instrumentation. At the same time, structural response analyses and loads estimations must be performed with models that are only partially validated using ground test data due to the fact that access to diagnostic and environmental ground tests are limited. To compound matters, project managers tend to reduce uncertainty factors designed to protect for loads increases and model unknowns. As a result, the designs progress rapidly before loads and structural problems are uncovered. This means that there are very few tools available to recover from structural dynamics issues in such a highly dynamic environment without costly redesigns late in the design cycle or in early operations.