ST. GEORGE — The demands placed upon a rocket and its payload during launch and separation are massive and can destroy delicate circuit boards and electrical components — a problem one capstone research project hopes to solve by identifying shock-related failures on the ground instead of finding out after the spacecraft and payload have been destroyed.

There are two forces acting on a rocket at the moment of liftoff: thrust, which moves the rocket upward by pushing gases downward in the opposite direction, and gravity, which pulls the rocket downward toward the center of the Earth.

Accelerating even a small payload (the load carried by a spacecraft) requires a significant amount of energy that can wreak havoc on the spacecraft and the payload. The entire process — from blastoff to separation — creates a series of short, high-intensity shocks with high-frequency sound waves that can damage the spacecraft’s structure and any sensitive equipment, electronics, satellites or other components on board.

To mitigate the risk of disaster, research and testing are critical in estimating the attenuating effects of distance, joints and other structural features between the source of the shock and the sensitive equipment.

To that end, Monty Kennedy, a retired mechanical engineer who has worked in the aerospace industry for decades, petitioned NASA for the use of its shock research module, “ShockSat,” a spacecraft mock-up system with dozens of sensors, used to design a testing method to catch potential failures that can lead to disaster.

The device was created as a capstone senior design project by two Utah Tech students, Trevor Butler and  Matthew McIntyre, who recently graduated as mechanical engineers. They codeveloped the testing module to simulate launch shock loads — sudden forces exerted onto the structure — into the base of the ShockSat module.

The forces replicated include the pyrotechnic charges, or small contained explosive charges, that are deployed several times during launch and create very high accelerations that can cause mechanical failures in electronics and small or brittle parts if these subsystems have not been carefully tested.

The students’ testing module has a compressed spring attached to a large steel pendulum that strikes the module in such a way as to replicate the forces placed upon both the spacecraft and the payload to determine any vulnerabilities before launch. The testing also proved to be repeatable and reliable.

A video of the presentation that includes clips provided courtesy of NASA, NOAA and SpaceX can be viewed at the top of this report.

Kennedy, who has been extensively involved in shock research, said the study of shock effects on spacecraft is critical in developing testing that can catch any shock-related failures on the ground — instead of finding these vulnerabilities during liftoff or separation — after both the spacecraft and the payload have been lost.

“Even today,” Kennedy said. “We are still having shock failures.”

He said that NASA and other large spacecraft manufacturers typically perform a pyrotechnic shock test before shipping the spacecraft off to the launch site to be integrated into the launch vehicle. Still, for small-to-medium-size spacecraft up to 2,000 pounds, no such shock testing is done at the manufacturing level.

It is the smaller aircraft that are routinely used to carry as many as 50 payloads, similar to the Falcon 9 spacecraft operated to shuttle the SpaceX satellites, for example, he said. So any shock-related failures can be very expensive — into the millions.

Kennedy has worked with engineering students at Utah Tech and Michigan Technical University — both of whom designed mock-up testing systems that are the first of their kind for these small to midsized spacecraft, he said.

The students at Utah Tech chose to go with the lever-based system, which is easier to control since the arm is attached to the stand by a heavy-gauged spring that works with the module’s mechanical interface, as opposed to using a pressurized projectile shooting through a cylinder, which was the design model created by the Michigan Technical University students.

Both designs can be used to qualify spacecraft shock loads.

“To my knowledge, these are the first two mobile shock testing devices that can be used to perform shock testing at their own testing facility,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy also attributes the research’s success to Utah Tech’s mechanical engineering department, which he said “is really a gem of an engineering program right here in Southern Utah, where the students are involved in hands-on projects building electromechanical systems from the moment they walk in the door as freshmen.”

At the helm of Utah Tech’s engineering and science department is Dr. Scott Skeen, a professor of mechanical engineering, who oversaw the research and has worked closely with Kennedy and the students during the capstone project.

Zach Curtis and Chantal Mikolyski, who just finished their junior year of college, also were involved in shock research over the last year. And Mikolyski recently was awarded an internship with NASA.

Skeen told St. George News that the project provided the students the opportunity to apply what they learned in the classroom to develop a reliable testing prototype to address a real-world issue.

Now that the projects are completed, Kennedy will be presenting the shock testing models and results provided by both schools at various engineering conferences over the next two years.

This effort is intended to encourage aerospace companies that are involved in launching and building spacecraft to perform both tap and shock testing, which is expected to have a great impact on eliminating mechanical failures created from shock loads that are present from liftoff to orbit.

Kennedy is also earning his doctorate in mechanical engineering through his involvement in the two research projects.

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