ACCELEROMETER BASED IMPACT LOCALIZATION AND SCALING FOR INFLATABLE SPACE STRUCTURES

ACCELEROMETER BASED IMPACT LOCALIZATION AND SCALING

FOR INFLATABLE SPACE STRUCTURES

By Kale Schrader

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Ali Abedi

A Lay Abstract of the Thesis Presented

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

Degree of Master of Science

(in Electrical Engineering)

August, 2010

            Space exploration is a cornerstone of American engineering and science. With the pivotal first moon landing occurring over 40 years ago, NASA has focused on a new task of achieving extended space missions, requiring scientists to live and work on celestial bodies. This brings the need to develop the specifications of a suitable space habitat. One solution lies in perfecting inflatable low-mass structures and equipping them with the necessities to withstand the adverse conditions inherent to these environments.

          This work focuses on the structural monitoring of an inflatable space habitat, more specifically, characterizing impacts on the surface of such a structure. Given many celestial objects have no atmosphere, they are not shielded from small space debris that would normally incinerate on earth, creating the need for these additional safeguards.  This thesis explores an accelerometer based system to localize and scale an impact on the structure’s surface.

          An inflatable testbed is setup with appropriately selected sensors and data collection hardware. Tailored for wireless sensor implementation, methodologies are developed that utilize the accelerometer array to accurately determine the location, and calculate the intensity of, an impacting object. Various approaches to the caveats of such a task are explored throughout. Finally, the resulting algorithms are tested and evaluated on the space habitat test structure, providing a working proof-of-concept for an accelerometer based wireless impact localization and scaling system.