ATI's Spacecraft Structures Design,
Analysis and Test course

Summary: This course provides the big picture of designing, analyzing, and testing flight structures for space missions. The objectives are to improve your understanding of how structures behave, how they fail, how to design them to be efficient and dependable for space missions, and how to build confidence through analysis and test. Emphasis throughout is on understanding the problem and finding good solutions. The course is highly interactive. Numerous examples, case histories from the instructor’s experience, and class problems drive home the key points. Bring a calculator to work problems. The course is aimed at mechanical design engineers, stress analysts, dynamics and loads engineers, test engineers, mechanical systems engineers, and others interested in the topic. The course will appeal to engineers of all levels of experience. Each participant will receive a copy of the presentation material as well as a copy of the instructor's book, Spacecraft Structures and Mechanisms: From Concept to Launch. Instructor: Tom Sarafin is President and owner of Instar Engineering and Consulting. He helps space programs in the areas of requirements definition, verification planning, structural design and analysis, launch environments, quality systems, and risk assessment. He has worked full time in the space industry since 1979, including over 13 years at Martin Marietta Astronautics (now Lockheed Martin), where he contributed to and led activities in structural analysis, design, and test. He is the editor and principal author of the book Spacecraft Structures and Mechanisms: From Concept to Launch and a contributing author to Space Mission Analysis and Design and Human Spaceflight: Mission Analysis and Design. He is also the author of a series of articles called "Doing Things Right in Space Programs." Course Outline: Introduction to Spacecraft Structures. Overview, structural functions and requirements, understanding verification, relating verification to requirements, typical design criteria, making designs robust. Ground and Space Environments. Typical life cycle, ground environments, space environment. Review of Statics and Dynamics. Static equilibrium, the equation of motion, modes of vibration, the loads analysis process. Launch Environments and How Structures Respond. Quasi-static loads, transient loads, sinusoidal excitation, acoustics, random vibration, pyrotechnic shock. Mechanics of Materials. Stress and strain, interaction of stresses, bending and torsion, deflections, thermoelastic effects, composite materials, identifying and avoiding weak spots. Strength Analysis. An effective process, common modes of failure, fastened joints, buckling, suggested structural design criteria. Structural Life Analysis. Fatigue, fracture mechanics, fracture control. Idealizing and Modeling Structures. Goals of idealization, introduction to finite-element analysis, making models efficient, ensuring quality. Preliminary Design. Process, configuring a spacecraft, deriving requirements from the configuration, types of structures, materials, methods of attachment, preliminary sizing, designing efficient structures. Avoiding Problems with Launch Loads and On-Orbit Vibration. Controlling the forcing function, locating components, adding passive damping, isolating modes of vibration. Integrating the Loads-Cycle Process. Overview of loads cycles, output transformation matrices, integrating stress analysis with loads analysis. Designing for Producibility. Keys to producibility, designing for manufacturing processes, dimensioning and tolerancing. Structural Verification. Verification logic flows, understanding the margin of safety, types of structural tests, designing a test, effective instrumentation, preparing to interpret test data. A Case Study: FalconSAT-2. Overview, approach to design and verification, simplifying the design loads, deriving loads from test results, designing the flight structure, the structural test plan, status. Tuition: Tuition for this four-day course is $1595 per person at one of our scheduled public courses. Onsite pricing is available. Please call us at 410-956-8805 or send an email to ati@ATIcourses.com. Register Now Without Obligation