An accurate determination of a spacecraft’s radio frequency electromagnetic field environment during launch and flight is critical for mission success. Typical fairing structures consist of a parabolic nose and a cylindrical core with diameters of 1 to 5 meters resulting in electrically large dimensions for typical operational sources at S, C and X band where the free space wavelength varies from 0.15 m to 0.03 m. These electrically large size and complex structures at present have internal fairing electromagnetic field evaluation that is limited to general approximation methods and some test data. Though many of today’s computational electromagnetic tools can model increasingly complex and large structures, they still have many limitations when used for field determination in electrically large cavities. In this dissertation, a series of test anchored, full wave computational electromagnetic models along with a novel application of the equivalent material property technique are presented to address the electrical, geometrical, and boundary constraints for electromagnetic field determination in composite fairing cavity structures and fairings with acoustic blanketing layers. Both external and internal excitations for these fairing configurations are examined for continuous wave and transient sources. A novel modification of the Nicholson Ross Weir technique is successfully applied to both blanketed aluminum and composite fairing structures and a significant improvement in computational efficiency over the multilayered model approach is obtained. The advantages and disadvantages of using commercially available tools by incorporating Multilevel Fast Multipole Method (MLFMM) and higher order method of moments (HO MoM) to extend their application of MoM to electrically large objects is examined for each continuous wave transmission case. The results obtained with these models are ii compared with those obtained using approximation techniques based on the Q factor, commonly utilized in the industry, and a significant improvement is seen in a prediction of the fields in these large cavity structures. A statistical distribution of data points within the fairing cavity is examined to study the nature of the fairing cavity field distribution and the effect of the presence of a spacecraft load on these fields is also discussed. In addition, a model with external application of Green’s function is examined to address the shielding effectiveness of honeycomb panels in a fairing cavity. Accurate data for lightning induced effects within a fairing structure is not available and hence in this dissertation, a transmission line matrix method model is used to examine induced lightning effects inside a graphite composite fairing structure. The simulated results are compared with test data and show good agreement.

A new passive treatment to reduce sound transmission into payload fairing at low frequency is investigated. This new solution is composed of optimally damped vibration absorbers (DVA) and optimally damped Helmholtz resonators (HR). A fully coupled structural-acoustic model of a composite cylinder excited by an external plane wave is developed as a first approximation of the system. A modal expansion method is used to describe the behavior of the cylindrical shell and the acoustic cavity; the noise reduction devices are modeled as surface impedances. All the elements are then fully coupled using an impedance matching method. This model is then refined using the digitized mode shapes and natural frequencies obtained from a fairing finite element model. For both models, the noise transmission mechanisms are highlighted and the noise reduction mechanisms are explained. Procedures to design the structural and acoustic absorbers based on single degree of freedom system are modified for the multi-mode framework. The optimization of the overall treatment parameters namely location, tuning frequency, and damping of each device is also investigated using genetic algorithm. Noise reduction of up to 9dB from 50Hz to 160Hz using 4% of the cylinder mass for the DVA and 5% of the cavity volume for the HR can be achieved. The robustness of the treatment performance to changes in the excitation, system and devices characteristics is also addressed. The model is validated by experiments done outdoors on a 10-foot long, 8-foot diameter composite cylinder. The excitation level reached 136dB at the cylinder surface comparable to real launch acoustic environment. With HRs representing 2% of the cylinder volume, the noise transmission from 50Hz to160Hz is reduced by 3dB and the addition of DVAs representing 6.5% of the cylinder mass enhances this performance to 4.3dB. Using the fairing model, a HR+DVA treatment is designed under flight constraints and is implemented in a real Boeing fairing. The treatment is composed of 220 HRs and 60 DVAs representing 1.1% and 2.5% of the fairing volume and mass respectively. Noise reduction of 3.2dB from 30Hz to 90Hz is obtained experimentally. As a natural extension, a new type of adaptive Helmholtz resonator is developed. A tuning law commonly used to track single frequency disturbance is newly applied to track modes driven by broadband excitation. This tuning law only requires information local to the resonator simplifying greatly its implementation in a fairing where it can adapt to shifts in acoustic natural frequencies caused by varying payload fills. A time domain model of adaptive resonators coupled to a cylinder is developed. Simulations demonstrate that multiple adaptive HRs lead to broadband noise reductions similar to the ones obtained with genetic optimization. Experiments conducted on the cylinder confirmed the ability of adaptive HRs to converge to a near optimal solution in a frequency band including multiple resonances. / Ph. D.

Nowadays, numerous applications of active sound transmission control require lightweight partitions with high transmission loss over a broad frequency range and simple control strategies. In this work an active-passive sound transmission control approach is investigated that potentially addresses these requirements. The approach involves the use of lightweight stiff panels, or tiles, attached to a radiating base structure through active-passive soft mounts and covering the structure surface. The resulting double-partition configuration was shown to have good high frequency passive isolation, but poor low frequency transmission loss due to the coupling of the tiles to the base vibration through the air gap. The low frequency transmission loss performance of the partition was increased by using the active mounts to cancel the local volume velocity of the tiles. The use of a decentralized control approach with independent single channel controllers for each tile facilitates the implementation of a multiple tile system in a large scale application. A coupled structural-acoustic model based on an impedance mobility matrix approach was formulated to investigate the potential performance of active-passive tile approach in controlling sound transmission through plates. The model was initially applied to investigate the sound transmission characteristics of a double-panel partition consisting of a single tile-plate configuration and then extended to model a partition consisting of multiple-tiles mounted on a plate. The system was shown to have significant passive performance above the mass-spring-mass resonance of the double-panel system. Both feedback and feedforward control approaches were simulated and shown to significantly increase the transmission loss of the partition by applying control forces in parallel with the mounts to reduce the tile normal velocity. A correspondent reduction in sound radiated power was obtained over a broad frequency range limited by the tile stiffness. The experimental implementation of the active-passive tile approach for the control of sound transmission through plates was also performed. Two main experimental setups were utilized in the investigations, the first consisting of a single tile mounted on a clamped plate and the other consisting of four active tiles mounted of a simply supported plate. Tile prototypes were implemented with lightweight stiff panels and integrated active-passive mounts were implemented with piezoelectric Thunder actuators. Both analog feedback and digital feedforward control schemes where designed and implemented with the objective of reducing the normal velocity of the tiles. Experimental results have demonstrated significant broad frequency range reductions in the sound transmission through the partition by active attenuation of the tile velocity. In addition, the experiments have shown that decentralized control can be successfully implemented for multiple tiles systems. The active-passive sound transmission control characteristics of the systems experimentally studied were observed to be in accordance with the analytical results. / Ph. D.

The research presented in this thesis focuses on the use of feedback control for lowering acoustic levels within launch vehicle payload fairings. Due to the predominance of conical geometries within payload fairings, our work focused on the analytical modeling of conical shrouds using modal and impedance based models. Incorporating an actuating boundary condition within a sealed enclosure, resonant frequencies and mode shapes were developed as functions of geometric and mechanical parameters of the enclosure and the actuator. Using a set of modal approximations, a set of matrix equations have been developed describing the homogeneous form of the wave equation. Extending to impedance techniques, the resonant frequencies of the structure were again calculated, providing analytical validation of each model. Expanding this impedance model to first order form, the acoustic model has been coupled with actuator dynamics yielding a complete model of the system relating pressure to control voltage. Using this coupled state-space model, control design using Linear Quadratic Regulator and Positive Position Feedback techniques has also been presented. Using the properties of LQR analysis, an analytical study into the degree of coupling between actuator and cavity as a function of actuator resonance has been conducted. Constructing an experimetnal test-bed for model validation and control implementation, a small sealed enclosure was built and outfitted with sensors. Placing a control speaker at the small end of the cone the large opening was sealed with a rigid termination. An internal acoustic source was used to excite the system and pressure measurements were captured using an array of microphones located throughout the conic section. Using the parameters of this experimental test-bed, comparisons were made between LQR and PPF control designs. Using an impulse disturbance to excite the system, LQR simulations predicted reductions of 53.2% below those of the PPF design, while the control voltages corresponding to these reductions were 43.8% higher for LQR control. Actual application of these control designs showed that the ability to manually set PPF gains made this design technique much more convenient for actual implementation. Yielding overall attenuation of 38% with control voltages below 200 mV, single-channel low authority control was seen to be an effective solution for low frequency noise reduction. Control was then expanded to a larger geometry representative of Minotaur fairings. Designing strictly from experimental results, overall reductions of 38.5% were observed. Requiring slightly larger control voltages than those of the conical cavity, peak voltages were still found to be less than 306 mV. Extrapolating to higher excitation levels of 140 dB, overall power requirements for 38.5% pressure reductions were estimated to be less than 16 W. / Master of Science