Realistic joints in a spacecraft structure have clearances at the interfacing parts. Many such systems can be considered to be having bilinear stiffness. A typical example is the propellant tank assembled with the structure of a spacecraft. However, it is seen that the responses of such systems subjected to base excitation are rarely reported. In this work, mathematical expressions for theoretically estimating the amplitude of its response, the frequency at which the response is the maximum and the maximum response when it is subjected to base sine excitation are derived. Several experiments are conducted on a typical such system subjecting it to different levels of base sine excitation. The frequency at which the response is the maximum reduces with the magnitude of excitation. The expressions derived in this work can be used in estimating the amplitudes of responses and their characteristics reasonably well.
Thermomechanical Simulation of an Aerogel/RTV Based Cryogenic Propellant Tank
