APPLICATION OF WAVE PROPAGATION TO

PYROSHOCK ANALYSIS

M.Gherlone, D.Lomario, M.Mattone, R.Ruotolo

Department of Aeronautical and Space Engineering

Politecnico di Torino
10129 Torino, Italy


 count a number of parameters, e.g., materials and thickness

The aim of this article is to investigate on the application of
wave propagation analysis in order to predict the dynamic re-
sponse to pyroshocks. Comparisons between results related
to components of common use in the aerospace engineering
field and obtained by using both NASTRAN and this novel ap-
plication of wave propagation analysis are reported and dis-
cussed.
  
of the panels. As a result, often this procedure leads to inac-
curate results.
The propagation of waves in structures is a subject extensively
studied, with a direct application on the prediction of struc-
ture borne sound transmission
 . Usually, the analysis is per-
formed in order to determine the amplitude of waves transmit-
ted from one component to the next one by passing through
a junction with a given geometry. In a following step the am-
plitude between transmitted, reflected and incident power can

be evaluated, providing the basic data (i.e., coupling loss fac-
Launch vehicles make use of explosive charges to separate
structural subsystems (such as a satellite) from the launcher,
deploy appendices, activate or deactivate subsystems (such
as valves of the propulsion subsystem). These devices have
the drawback of giving rise to high accelerations (called py-
roshocks) and extremely short transients with a very broad-
band frequency spectrum that may be highly dangerous for
flight equipments such as electronic devices.
The evaluation of the dynamic response to pyroshocks is a
hard task: in this case classical techniques based on the finite
element method cannot be used, since at high frequency is
too expensive from the computational point of view to obtain
the matching between element dimension and wavelength of
waves propagating through the structure.
Even if some techniques may be used, as described in
 , at
the moment an analysis technique is not yet established and
NASA in
 suggests to perform pyroshock analysis, in terms
of determining the acceleration at the mounting points of most

 






critical components, by using empirical Transmissibilities that
depend basically on the type of structure under analysis (e.g.,
honeycomb, skin-frame, monocoque, etc.), on the distance
between source and the receiver locations, on the presence
of junctions. These data have been collected mainly during an
experimental activity performed several years ago
 . Anyway,
it must be stressed that the procedure does not takes into ac-
tors) to be used in Statistical Energy Analysis calculations in
the high frequency range.
The basic idea behind this article is to take advantage of the
capability of wave propagation analysis of determining the am-
plitudes of transmitted waves in order to define Transmissibility
Functions to be used in the framework of pyroshock analysis;
it follows that the same basic philosophy that is behind the
procedure proposed by NASA in
 is applied.
As a result, the aim of this article is to investigate on the ap-
plication of wave propagation analysis in order to predict the
dynamic response to pyroshocks. In the following sections
firstly the analysis of waves propagating through a structure
is reviewed and, subsequently, comparisons between results
related to a simplified structure of a satellite and obtained by
using NASTRAN and this novel application of wave propaga-
tion analysis are described and discussed.
Structural vibrations can be considered as given by the su-
perposition of elastic waves that propagate through the struc-
ture and are partially reflected and partially transmitted at
structural discontinuities. This process of reflection and trans-
mission has been referred to as the ”attenuation of structure
borne-sound” by Cremer et al in their book
 .
Numerical procedures capable of predicting this process of
reflection and transmission are based on the determination
of the properties of joints, e.g., beam and plate junctions, in
terms of ratios between transmitted and reflected power with zg
respect to the incident power and to define a relation between
the damping of the component under analysis and the dissi- xg
pated power of waves propagating through this component.

Cremer et al. in
 analyzed joints between a limited num-

θi
ber of either beams or plates (the latter under the assumption
of cylindrical bending), up to 4, providing the reader with the yg
basic knowledge to analyze more complex junctions. Subse-
quently, Craven and Gibbs in
 proposed a versatile method
(yi , zi )
of analysis of sound waves generated at a junction of plates as
a result of a wave incident on one of the plates. Langley and
Heron in
 substantially extended this method and proposed
a generic plate/beam junction which consists in an arbitrary
number of plates which are either coupled through a beam
or directly coupled along a line. They solved the problem of #$! % & !" !' () *& & $(+(
determining the amplitude of both reflected and transmitted ," ) ' - '  ,  -(
waves by taking advantage of a matrix approach, arriving to
the formulation of a dynamic stiffness matrix of the junction;
as a result, their work permits to deal with real structures such
as those currently used in the aerospace engineering field.
Ty
    !" N yx
Ny
As already stated, the analysis of wave transmission at junc- My
tions follows strictly that proposed by Langley and Heron in
 ,
so that only the basics are given here. z
x
The geometry of the junction considered in this article is y
shown in figure 1, where an arbitrary number of semi-infinite
panels are joined along a common line by means of a beam;
the motion of the panels are governed by the Kirchoff theory, #$! %
-( *&  ("( ," ) '
while, according to
 , the equation of motion of the beam is "-'$ ," . "$  & +/
derived by taking into account Timoshenko theory, moreover
all the structural elements are assumed to be isotropic.
As underlined in
 , under the assumption that the incident
It is assumed that the motion of panels is described by vari- wave on one panel has space/time dependency given by
ables

   along the local reference system
   , as

   
, compatibility of displacements at the junc-
shown in figure 2. By denoting with 




 
 
tion requires that all panels must have the dependency


and




 
  the bending and in-plane stiffness of

  
, leaving the dependency on  to be determined
the  -th panel, respectively, the equations of motion are: by the equation of motion of the panels, i.e., by its properties

   

and wave type.
 


  


  




  

  

  




  

By focusing the attention on the out-of-plane motion, the dy-
namic response of the  -th panel can be written as the su-
 
with 
 
, 

  

and 
 


the density per unit
perposition of flexural waves moving toward the free edge (at

infinity), i.e., characterized by a negative (real or imaginary)
area of the material.
wavenumber   :

Stress resultants are related to displacements according to:

  

  
   


 


 

 

  

    


 
 

         
  


   





    


As a result, it follows:
   



   



 
    

  



 



This expression allows to determine displacement, 
, and According to
 equations (5) and (9) can be used to produce
rotation, 
  , of the panel edge at the junction, i.e., where a relation, expressed in the local reference system, between
  . By inverting the relation between 
, 
and  ,  four generalized forces and four generalized displacements at
it is possible to express the out-of-plane motion of the panel the constrained end of every panel:
as a function of the constraint edge degrees of freedom, 

and 
. This last expression can be subsequently introduced 
  
!


into (2) to provide a direct relation between shear, bending

    
moment, displacement and rotation at the constraint edge: with

   


       !
  







   

 
In order to switch to the global reference system, the following
where
rotation matrix must be taken into account:
  
 
   
 







          




    









 "






 

 



 

 







 #
#

  

   
with
#
 
 


 

As pointed out in
 a similar procedure is applied in order
to determine a relation between in-plane shear,   , traction,
#
 
 
 
 

 , and in-plane displacements at the constraint edge. permitting to take into account that the junction of plates with
the beam is not located on the beam neutral axis.
By recalling that wavenumbers for longitudinal and shear
waves in the panels are given by:  
As a result, calling  the external forces acting on the
junctions, to be determined as described subsequently, and
  
  
   
  



   
$ 
    the displacements of the junction, for 
the  dependency of waves moving toward the free edge of
the panel is:


panels the following equation holds:


    "

 "

$    $

  
    





and in-plane motion is given by the superposition of two types where   is the dynamic stiffness matrix of the connected,

      
of waves according to: semi-infinite panels.

    The beam connecting the various panels can be taken into ac-
  

  










count in a straightforward way. Indeed by writing its equation


 of motion under assumptions permitting to neglect any warp-
As well as in the case of out-of-plane motion, this last equa- ing effect of the cross section as well as rotary inertia, it is
tion evaluated at    permits to determine the constraint possible to derive its dynamic stiffness matrix  %
relating
edge displacements


and 

as a functions of amplitudes  
forces  and degrees of freedom $ already introduced. 
 and  . By inverting this relation, in-plane variables
and
can be found in
 .
 are expressed as a function of the constraint edge degrees
of freedom; this last equation introduced into (2) permits to
determine the dynamic relation between in-plane forces and
Elements of matrix  %
As a result, the presence of the beam is considered by intro-
ducing its dynamic stiffness matrix into (12) and recalling both

 
displacements at the constrained edge:

 
  
 


equilibrium and congruence conditions:

  
   %  $




 
 
   




where  
External forces  acting on the junction are evaluated by
 






  considering the effect of the incident wave on a given panel,
e.g., panel &. By focusing the attention on bending incident 0.7

waves, caused by the explosion of pyrotechnic charges, with

amplitude , inclination ' on the junction, wavenumbers   0.65 3

  ',     ' along  and  directions, respectively,

 
2
induced displacements, collected in ! , at the constrained 0.6

edge (supposed to be free) are given by:

Amplitude of Transmissibility
0.55

 ¼    ¼  
1


0.5

 
and corresponding forces, collected in  , acting on the T
bb
2−1
junction are: 0.45

¼
 




 
 

¼
  

  
 


0.4
T
bb
3−1

0.35
As a result, in order to satisfy equilibrium requirements of the
whole assembly of panels:
0.3
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000

%  $   "
 ! 
   [ Hz ]

  


As a result, for an incident bending wave of amplitude  ,

#$! 1% +( , +'$ *2 +&
after defining the frequency  , wavenumbers   ,  and  can
"' ' '2 +* + 2 1 '  , 
be evaluated, permitting to determine the value of the right
!" 3 + , 4!( --
hand side of equation (16). The dynamic matrix of the whole
junction depends only on geometric and material properties,
so that the dynamic response of the junction, $ , can be  into account damping effects. According to

imaginary parts
quickly evaluated. Finally, the amplitude of reflected or trans- of the wavenumber are given by:
mitted bending waves of the  th panel is obtained by extract-
ing the  degree of freedom after projecting $ on the local     *    *
 
 
reference system through !
  "
$ . 
so that the amplitude attenuation due to damping at frequency
The ratio between the amplitude of transmitted and inci-  and over a distance  is given by:
dent bending wave gives the Transmissibility of the junction,



 , for beam ( of junction  and with incident wave 
  

    


 ! ) and transmitted wave 
 ! ). A Transmissibility 
  

  

 
  



function for transmitted bending waves is shown in figure 3
for a junctions with 3 beams of equal properties, with incident for longitudinal and bending waves respectively (the effect of
bending wave on the lower beam. transverse waves is neglected in the following section, so that
it is not considered in 18). Figure 4 shows the Transmissibility
function   for bending waves between nodes 30 and 73 of
 -$ 0" the structure shown in figure 5.

The decaying effect of the dynamic response in both space

and time is associated with the presence of damping in the 1 5
 
structure under investigation. It is well known that one way
of describing the presence of damping is by using a complex In order to validate the procedure described in the previous
modulus of elasticity, i.e., ¼ 
  * , where * is the so- section, a finite element model of the beam structure shown
called loss factor
 . in figure 5 has been developed. The exciting force has been
located at the lower end of the structure; it is described by the
As a result of using a complex modulus of elasticity, both following expression:
wave propagation velocities and wavenumbers become com-
plex. By considering a wave propagating in the  direction, +
#   
,#

i.e.,

  , and writing the wavenumber      , the

previous relation becomes: Moreover, it has a duration of 1 msec, so that its overall shape
is that of a pulse-sine. The FE model has been developed in


  

 

 
order to assure that the dynamic response could be described
accurately up to a frequency of 5 kHz, so that every beam,
The first term represents a reduction of the wave amplitude with the length of 0.5 m, of the structure has been divided into
and allows one to determine a Transmissibility Function taking 50 elements.
Material and geometric properties are: Young’s Modulus  1

- 

N/m , density    kg/m , thickness

- m, Poisson ratio   -. Moreover, it has been as-
0.9

sumed that every beam represents a plate in cylindrical bend- 0.8

ing. Finally, a modal viscous damping, . , of 0.05 has been set
for every mode of the structure.

Amplitude of Transmissibility
0.7

NASTRAN has been used in order to evaluate the dynamic 0.6

response of the structure to pulse excitation and the modal

0.5
transient solution has been run. Results have been collected
at a number of ‘control’ nodes located in the centres of the
0.4
beams, as shown in figure 5.
0.3
Wave propagation analysis has been applied as described in
the previous section, by considering both the effect of damping 0.2

and the effect of joints on the propagation of bending, longitu-

dinal and shear waves. In particular, the out-of-plane acceler- 0.1
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000
[ Hz ]
ation at node no. 30 has been used as a reference, permitting
to evaluate the dynamic responses at nodes 73, 124, 175 and
226 through Transmissibilities due to both joint and damping #$! 6% +() 7$  ""! '-$
effects. 0" , +'$ * ' , ' 18  91

In order to show the details of the procedure, the dynamic

response at node 175 is evaluated once the out-of and in- Node no. 73 124 175 226
plane acceleration at node 124 is known, denoted as 
  NASTRAN 23% 23% 6.3% 6.3%
and 
 , respectively. The out-of-plane acceleration is Wave Prop. 31% 31% 7.0 % 7.0%
related to a bending wave propagating between joints A and B
while the in-plane acceleration is related to a longitudinal wave
propagating between these nodes. As a result, the amplitude
of bending and longitudinal waves at node B are obtained from 
 %  '!( ((  &$& ,4!") , &
those related at node 124 by applying a transmissibility taking ! "( '
into account the damping effect:


   
  
 
Shock Response Spectrum ½ in correspondence of the vari-

   
  
 

ous control nodes. Results are summarized in figure 7 where
By considering the transmissibility due to the presence of curves obtained by considering accelerations predicted by
joints, the out-of-plane acceleration (i.e., that important for py- NASTRAN and wave propagation are superimposed. The up-


roshock prediction) at node 175 can be derived:


   



  
   
  
  
 
   
per curve is related to the reference node, node 30, so that
only NASTRAN results are available in this case, while the
two lower couple of curves are related to nodes 73-124 and

 175-226, respectively. Figure 7 shows that the wave propaga-
where the last term,  
 , takes into account the dissipation tion approach permits to predict with very good accuracy the
of bending waves from joint B to node 175 due to damping SRS at nodes 175 and 226, i.e., very far from the source of
effect. the excitation, and with sufficient accuracy at nodes 75 and
124.
Figure 6 compares results obtained by using NASTRAN and
wave propagation analysis at control node 226. This fig- Finally, table 1 summarizes the prevailing results in terms of
ure shows a good agreement between reference results, i.e., residual SRS at every control node evaluated at about 1 kHz,
those obtained by using NASTRAN, and wave propagation re- i.e., where the SRS reaches a maximum value.
sults, demonstrating that the proposed procedure can be used
in order to determine dynamic responses at control nodes that Subsequently, the analysis has been performed by neglect-
are sufficiently far from the reference node, i.e., node 30, as ing completely the presence of both longitudinal and shear
well as from ends and discontinuities of the beams. This last
aspect is extremely important and can be considered as the
½
 
         


normal consequence of using a theory capable of describing
the propagation of waves in semi-infinite structural media.          
   
               
 
            
Out-of-plane accelerations have been used to evaluate the         

 
 5
10

4
10
226
Wave propagation results
3
10
175 NASTRAN results
B

[ m/s2 ]
2
10

124
1
10

73
A 0
10

30 −1
10
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000
[ Hz ]

f( t ) #$! ;% - +* ""( -'"' +)


' +) * --$ ()  ' ;
#$! :% & + !"! !' ()
junctions and damping in structures, so that it makes rather
straightforward the evaluation of pyroshock effects, given a
waves into the beam structure, i.e., by setting the correspond-
reference signal, far from the exciting location. Preliminary
ing transmissibilities  
  and  
  equal to zero. Since
numerical investigations illustrated in this study show that the
corresponding results are extremely close to those obtained
proposed technique is capable of providing satisfactory results
by considering the effects of these waves, it follows that both
in general, and accurate results when the location under anal-
longitudinal and shear waves can be neglected, at least in
ysis is sufficiently far from the exciting source.
thin-walled, isotropic structures.

A similar analysis has been performed on the structure made

of 5 connected plates shown in figure 8. Properties of the
# 
plates are the same of the properties of the beams used in
the previous example. Moreover, plates are connected by us- [1] <(+(! <, 5$ =, > , (

ing a beam whose cross-section is shown in figure 8. The and !+ , Dynamic Environmental Criteria, NASA
excitation has been applied on the lower edge of plate no.1, Technical Handbook 7005, 2001.
with time-history given by equation (19), and the dynamic re- [2] NASA Technical Standard, Pyroshock Test Criteria,
sponse has been evaluated by using NASTRAN as well as NASA-STD-7003, 1999.
described previously. ‘Control nodes’ have been set at the
middle of every plate so that, by considering the node on plate [3] >"  =, 5"& 5 and ' ,
no.1 as the reference one, the dynamic response on the other Aerospace Systems Pyrotechnic Shock Data, Volume IV
four plates has been derived. Figure 9 compares the dynamic - Pyrotechnic Shock Design Guidelines Manual, Martin
response provided by NASTRAN and that predicted by us- Marietta Corp., 1970.
ing wave transmission analysis on plate no.5, showing a good [4]  , <"7( 5 and $ , Structure-Borne
agreement. Finally, figure 10 shows Shock Response Spectra Sound - Structural Vibrations and Sound Radiation at Au-
evaluated by using NASTRAN and wave propagation results. dio Frequencies, 2nd Edition, Springer-Verlag, 1988.
As well as in the previous example, the agreement is excellent
for plates 4 and 5 while it is only sufficient for the two plates [5]  , ++ 5, Sound Transmission and
nearer to the source. Mode Coupling at Junctions of Thin Plates, Part I: Rep-
resentation of the Problem.
[6] $() , < ><, Elastic Wave Transmission
6 

 Through Plate/Beam Junctions, Journal of Sound and Vi-
bration, 143(2), 241-253, 1990.
In this article a new approach aimed at pyroshock prediction
has been proposed. It is based on the evaluation of Transmis-
[7]  
, <"7 , Pyrochosk Analysis and Test of
Composite Satellite Structures, AIAA Paper 92-02-167.
sibility functions permitting to consider the presence of both
 4
10 5
10

3
Nodes 73 & 124 4
10
10

3
10
2
10 Nodes 175 & 226
Wave propagation result

[ m/s2 ]
[g]

2
10
NASTRAN result
1
10

1
10

0
10
0
10

−1
10 −1
0 1 2 3 4
10 10 10 10 10 10
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000
natural frequency [ Hz ] [ Hz ]

#$! 9%  -'"' +)

' +) * #$! A% - +* ""( -'"' +)
--$ ()  ( '

' +) * --$ ()  & ''(
, -( : , & *3'( !"!

4
10

Plates 2 & 3
5 10
3

4 2
Plates 4 & 5
10
[g]

3 1
10

2
6

42

0
10

1
−1
10
0 1 2 3 4
10 10 10 10 10
natural frequency [ Hz ]
20 6

#$! 8%  -'"' +)

' +) *

#$! ?% & *3'( !"! !' () --$ ()  ( (" , &
*&  @  & !" *3'( !"!