Publications Details
FY18 ASC P&EM L2 Milestone 6356: Improve Replication of In-service Mechanical Environments. Executive Summary
The overall goal of this work was to improve the modeling of laboratory shock and vibration testing. Laboratory shock and vibration testing is used to qualify Nuclear Weapon components for the environment they will experience in the field. Standard practice is to use rigid test fixtures so that no spurious modes are introduced during laboratory testing. Rigid test fixtures may however in some cases change the dynamics of the component being tested, resulting in laboratory testing being more severe than what would occur in the field. This milestone investigated the use of topology optimization to create laboratory test fixtures that would better replicate the dynamics that components experience in field environments.