Feasibility Study of Flight Load Simulation on Ariane 5 ESC-B Stage

Abstract

The development of the new ESC-B stage of Ariane 5 requires the dynamic qualification of the structural design. With the purpose to reduce the experimental effort it is intended to perform the dynamic qualification tests within the hot firing test campaign in Lampoldshausen using single or multi-point excitation. This report describes the analytical investigation of the feasibility of substituting the exspected flight loads from base excitation by single or multi-point excitation. The utilization of the qualification base acceleration input and allowable limits for certain structural points leads to maximum forces of 22.5 kN for single and 11.3 kN for multi-point excitation with up to 4 exciters. From this it may be concluded that it should be possible to perform a qualification of ESC-B structure with single or multi-point excitation. However, the risk remains that the real structural behaviour deviates considerably from the assumptions used for the analytical investigations. Under this circumstances the realizable qualification might be restricted to certain load cases or frequency ranges.