| Solid Rocket Motor
Testing ATI researchers
instrumented a large full-scale solid rocket motor with fiber-optic sensors at the Naval
Air Warfare Center (NAWC) in China Lake, California. The motor was heavily instrumented
with conventional sensors, such as foil strain gauges and pressure traducers. The
fiber-optic sensors used by ATI measured the strain response of the motor in mid-cylinder
of the chamber and along the aft end of the nozzle. The ATI fiber-optic system was a
stand-alone unit and did not require the use of the facilities at China Lake, with the
exception of a power source for the computer and data acquisition system. There was
excellent correlation with data obtained through conventional measurements. The
fiber-optic data were taken at a higher sampling rate (33 kHz for the fiber-optic system
vs. 2 kHz for the conventional foil gauges) and provided more detailed results. |
ATI collected fiber-optic sensor data from a
full-scale solid rocket motor at a higher frequency than data from conventional sensors.
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