Nondestructive prediction of point source pyroshock response spectra based on experimental conditioning of laser-induced shocks

• Pyroshock response prediction method was proposed using the laser shock.
• The nondestructive laser shock replaces the ballistic pyroshock test.
• The optimum laser shock conditions to predict real pyroshock were investigated.
• The conditioned laser shock enabled to provide high similarity to the real pyroshock.

Pyroshock can easily cause failures in electronic and optical components that are sensitive to high-frequency energy. Pyroshock is generated during explosive-based pyrotechnical events, such as the separation of boosters from a space shuttle and the separation of satellites from a space launcher. Therefore, the prediction of high-frequency structural response, particularly the shock response spectrum (SRS), is important for safe operation of pyrotechnical devices. In general, real explosive testing using distributed accelerometers is widely used. This paper proposes a technology to replace the expensive, dangerous, low-repeatability explosive test with a laser-induced shock test based on a laser beam and in-line filter conditioning. This method does not use any special numerical signal processing. Two different experiments based on explosive and laser excitation were performed with a 2-mm thick aluminum plate. The optimum laser-induced shock experimental conditions to predict real pyroshock were investigated while considering the size, energy, and fluence of the laser beam as parameters. The similarity of the SRS of the laser-induced shock to that of the real explosive pyroshock was evaluated based on the mean acceleration difference (MAD, %). The experimentally determined optimal conditions were also applied to four points on the path of a pyroshock propagation. To match the SRS at each point, the laser-induced shock was amplified, for which three different gain concepts are proposed: the initial gain, optimized gain, and constant gain. The proposed technology enables nondestructive pyro SRS prediction by conditioning the laser-induced shock to obtain an SRS with high similarity to the real pyroshock.