How much vibration is there in a typical rocket flight, anyway? I hadn't it thought about it but now I realize I have no idea. If there is vibration, what sort of frequencies?In a rocket there is more linear acceleration and I suspect a lot less constant vibration than is in an aircraft or drone.
I need to look at some old flight data and do the statistics on it. I don't have a feel for the levels although I suspect I know when they will happen based on various causes. Getting slammed by work currently so I might be able to have a look in January if I'm lucky.How much vibration is there in a typical rocket flight, anyway? I hadn't it thought about it but now I realize I have no idea. If there is vibration, what sort of frequencies?
Hi There!
Do you have experience with mounting IMUs in rockets so that no vibrations are transferred during the flight? Do you have any application examples?
Thanks in advance my friends!
How much vibration is there in a typical rocket flight, anyway? I hadn't it thought about it but now I realize I have no idea. If there is vibration, what sort of frequencies?
I don't have any measurement data at the moment, but I do know that some hybrid motors can introduce significant on-axis resonance due to combustion instability (sounds like a bad case of flatulence!). This would need to be addressed if you were relying on IMU data when flying some hybrids. I do recall seeing this combustion resonance in accelerometer data in some of my earlier hybrid flights - I certainly heard it! Even some solid motors, e.g., sparkies, might display some combustion noise, too. There might also be aerodynamically-induced vibrations as well.It seems to me that it depends on the type of rocket flight, speed, trajecetory and dynamics itself.
What sort of frequencies are we talking about?I don't have any measurement data at the moment, but I do know that some hybrid motors can introduce significant on-axis resonance due to combustion instability (sounds like a bad case of flatulence!). This would need to be addressed if you were relying on IMU data when flying some hybrids. I do recall seeing this combustion resonance in accelerometer data in some of my earlier hybrid flights - I certainly heard it! Even some solid motors, e.g., sparkies, might display some combustion noise, too. There might also be aerodynamically-induced vibrations as well.
I don't recall the actual frequencies in my hybrid flights, but audibly they would have been anywhere from 50Hz to 100Hz or more, typically. It would vary from one hybrid motor to another. Even with the same motor hardware, a different grain could produce different results. Some documents do show spectral components of up to 1kHz.What sort of frequencies are we talking about?
A FFT of that data would be interesting....As I've mentioned in a hybrid thread, I purposefully run my hybrids unstable for the crowd-pleasing effect. Makes for a very ugly acceleration plot and whilst this is a non-useful extreme case for the purpose of this discussion, it's actually one of my smoother traces
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TP
I did that once a while back. Digging through the archives I find plots for a K hybrid and M composite. They are like night and day. M energy concentrated at 0Hz but the hybrid spread out.A FFT of that data would be interesting....
- If you have an ideal IMU you should mount it so the IMU has exactly the same motion as your rocket in flight, including vibrations. But not more motion, which means no slop in the mounting or the electronics bay or the sled etc.
- However a real IMU has a finite sampling frequency and you do not want to pass any vibrations to the IMU greater than 1/2 the sampling frequency. Since most rockets have significant mass it is probably unlikely the rocket will have a very high frequency vibration.
- If you think vibrations may be present in excess of half your IMU's sample rate then you can use an elastomer mount as shown in Over the Top's post to mechanically filter those high frequency vibrations out. However do not over-do that dampening because rocket vibration data can be useful to know.
I don't have any measurement data at the moment, but I do know that some hybrid motors can introduce significant on-axis resonance due to combustion instability (sounds like a bad case of flatulence!). This would need to be addressed if you were relying on IMU data when flying some hybrids. I do recall seeing this combustion resonance in accelerometer data in some of my earlier hybrid flights - I certainly heard it! Even some solid motors, e.g., sparkies, might display some combustion noise, too. There might also be aerodynamically-induced vibrations as well.
Does this mean that if my IMU is at 400 Hz, it is best if the natural frequency of the rakirt is less than 200 Hz?
- I have a good mems sensor and magnetometer dedicated to flights
- I am afraid that the vibrations of the rocket will be so large that they will be transferred to the sensor, which will disturb the measurement. This is very important to me because the INS algorithm is very sensitive to these vibrations and artificial rocket acceleration errors may arise due to high accelerometer noise. Wants to filter out the IMU most optimally
In the absence of antialiasing filters, input signals whose frequency
is more than half the ODR alias or that fold into the measurement
bandwidth can lead to inaccurate measurements. To mitigate
this inaccuracy, a four-pole, low-pass filter is provided at the
input of the ADC. The filter bandwidth is user selectable, and
the default bandwidth is 200 Hz. The maximum bandwidth is
constrained to at most half of the ODR, to ensure that the
Nyquist criteria is not violated.
Which one?
The acceleration of the rocket launch is vibration, a big one. One cycle, broad frequency content. You want to capture that accurately, not over filter it. Any vibration frequency greater than the Nyquist frequency (1/2 sample rate) will be converted to garbage. Anything below is real response and should be preserved. I do not know what the INS algorithm is but real vibrations should be integrated correctly and not create error the processing the IMU. The integral of a sin wave over n periods is 0.
Most accelerometers have built in anti-aliasing (low pass) filters you can configure. An electrical filter and an mechanical filter are identical. I prefer the electrical filter because you know what you got. Below is an excerpt from the Analog ADXL372 datasheet.
Check your IMU datasheet and configure it property and you should have no problems.
Looking at the datasheet I have a couple comments.I have sensonor Stim300 with 80g range.
Hi There!
Do you have experience with mounting IMUs in rockets so that no vibrations are transferred during the flight? Do you have any application examples?
Thanks in advance my friends!
Looking at the datasheet I have a couple comments.
1. It looks like the module doesn't not have any anti-aliasing filter. So choose a high sample rate and maybe mount with an o-ring sandwich on the screws.
2. The maximum gyro rate of 400 deg/s is low for a rocket. If the rocket spins faster than 480 deg/s you will rail the gyro and lose ability to determine orientation of the rocket. Align your fins ahd hope your rocket doesn't spin.
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