The Farside Seismic Suite (FSS) is a JPL seismic instrument designed to fly on a NASA CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) lunar lander.  In order to achieve its science mission FSS has to survive and operate thru the harsh lunar night. To meet the thermal challenges FSS leverages a hypercube architecture that results in a highly thermally-isolated instrument inner enclosure. In turn, this architecture leads to a number of structural challenges associated with surviving launch, surviving extreme temperatures, and providing a seismic transmissive load path to the instruments with unconventional, preloaded primary load paths.  In addition, the structural design requires custom isolation to limit dynamic launch loads at the sensitive seismic instruments.

Quartus worked collaboratively with the JPL FSS team for over two years, functioning as the primary structural (stress and dynamics) analyst. Tasks included:

  • Development, maturation, and correlation of system-level structural FEM
  • Stress and buckling analysis for preload, MAC, and thermal distortion
    • Detailed bolted joint assessment
  • Random vibration analysis for flight and test environments
    • Force-limiting
    • Subcomponent environment derivation
  • Analysis-driven trade studies to design isolation system to reduce dynamic environments for seismometer
  • Prototype vibration test support
    • Pre-test analysis & planning, onsite test support, FEM correlation
  • Modal test
    • Conducted onsite model tests to (indirectly) measure load of preloaded structural elements
  • Detailed breakout nonlinear contact analyses & trade studies
  • Analytical support for material testing

  • FE Modeling
  • Stress Analysis
  • Structural Dynamics Analysis
  • Vibration Testing
  • Modal Testing
  • Material Testing
  • Model Correlation

  • FEMAP
  • Simcenter NASTRAN
  • Hypermesh
  • Custom Software (Q-Dynamics, Q-Bolt)