The separation of the automated transport vehicle from the Ariane 5 Launch Vehicle introduces high pyrotechnical shocks on the solar arrays. A bread board test has been performed to check the capability of a small section of the solar arrays. A bread board test has been performed to check the capability of a small section of the solar array (a holddown and release system stack including solar cells) to withstand a pyroshock with shock response spectrum levels over 10000 g. The specified shock is reproduced as accurately as possible. The applied shock resulted in several defects of the test unit due to a strong local response of the test set-up. The strong response was required to reproduce the specified levels. However, in order to avoid overtesting, strong local responses must be avoided. This led to a new test with a different approach: ''check which shock response spectrums the test unit can withstand''. Three well known test set-ups (with increasing shock levels and without strong local responses) are chosen and used in the second test. The test unit proved able to withstand shock response spectrum levels over 20000 g without significant defects. The specified shock spectrum was not met along the entire frequency range, but sufficient confidence is gained to go ahead with a system level test due to the results obtained from the second test and an anticipated significant reduction of the shock specification in the lower frequency range.
Pyroshock tests on a solar array holddown and release system
Pyroschockprüfungen am Halterungs- und Entriegelungssystem für eine Solarzellenanordnung
2000
7 Seiten, 15 Bilder, 2 Tabellen, 7 Quellen
Conference paper
English
Pyroshock Tests on Solar Array Holddown and Release System
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