THERMO-VIBRO-ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS AND STRUCTURAL MITIGATION DESIGN OF ROCKET LAUNCH PAD FLAME DEFLECTOR

The research has been able to create a computational model that can be used to analyze the thermo-vibro-acoustic characteristics of a rocket launch flame deflector. The design objective to prevent structural damage due to a plume temperature of 3000°C was accomplished by creating a 300 mm sacrificial layer of refractory materials. This layer was able to keep the core material of M50 concrete at normal ambient temperatures. Also, the modal analysis proved that the fundamental frequency of the structure is 232.68 Hz, hence making the structure structurally rigid enough. While the research has provided an excellent benchmark based on steady state and modal analysis, future studies can apply the Transient Structural Analysis and Computational Fluid Dynamics methods.

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