Publications

Defining component environments and margin through zemblanic consideration of function spaces

Starr, Michael J.; Segalman, Daniel J.

Historically the qualification process for vehicles carrying vulnerable components has centered around the Shock Response Spectrum (SRS) and qualification consisted of devising a collection of tests whose collective SRS enveloped the qualification SRS. This involves selecting whatever tests are convenient that will envelope the qualification SRS over at least part of its spectrum; this selection is without any consideration of the details of structural response or the nature of anticipated failure of its components. It is asserted that this approach often leads to over-testing, however, as has been pointed out several times in the literature, this approach may not even be conservative. Given the advances in computational and experimental technology in the last several decades, it would be appropriate to seek some strategy of test selection that does account for structural response and failure mechanism and that pushes against the vulnerabilities of that specific structure. A strategy for such a zemblanic (zemblanity is the opposite of serendipity, the faculty of making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries by design) approach is presented.