A 10,000 Foot Drop Test

A large aerospace company designed a structure that was to be dropped from several miles up in the atmosphere and free fall to the ground. The company` s engineers had theorized what the 6-degree-of-freedom (6 DOF) motion characteristics of the structure during free fall would be as well as the orientation of the structure at ground impact. They had witnessed the stable behavior of similar test articles in previous drop tests but wanted to push the envelope this time by showing the structure would recover from a tumbling condition.

To further test the theory, they wanted to perform drop tests of the structure, instrumented with a unique 6 DOF measurement package. The package was intended to capture rotational motion characteristics during the drop and decelerations at ground impact.