Launch Vehicle Operational Environments

Abstract

There are numerous operational environments that a launch vehicle and its payload are subjected to during launch and flight. These include both external environments, such as ground wind loading and atmospheric pressure, as well as self‐induced, such as vibration due to engine thrust. The relative influence of these environments varies significantly during the different phases of flight, necessitating multi‐disciplinary design and analysis approaches. This chapter describes the various environments, as well as the approaches used to establish the viability of launch vehicle and spacecraft designs to survive the launch and flight environments. In addition, day‐of‐launch operational considerations for flying a launch vehicle safely through the atmosphere, while staying within its structural and control system design limits are also discussed.

Design of frequency-tunable mesh washer isolators using shape memory alloy actuators

“…In launch vehicles, a high-magnitude and high-frequency pyroshock can cause malfunctions in electronic components, resulting in catastrophic flight failure (Lee et al, 2014; Moening, 1984). In addition, in the maximum dynamic-pressure phase, sinusoidal and random vibrations below 100 Hz are generated by aerodynamic loading (Kabe and Kendall, 2010), which could reduce the structural stability of payloads. Shock isolators are frequently used to protect payloads from severe shock loads and the natural frequencies of the isolators are often set to low values for sufficient shock attenuation (Johnson et al, 2006).…”