SECONDARY SYSTEM-ANALYSIS FOR SPACE PAY-LOAD

The paper deals with the response of a secondary system carried on by a space vehicle during its orbital flight, i.e. when subjected to grav itational and fluid dynamical actions. The vibrations of the inner loa d are passively controlled using an adequate base isolation device who se behaviour can be represented by a nonlinear endochronic hysteretic model. The possibility of an efficient analysis of the globally nonlin ear space-vehicle/pay-load system is investigated. In particular, the possibility of substituting a coupled structural dynamic analysis with an analysis which decouples the responses of the primary (vehicle) an d secondary (pay-load) systems is investigated. The accuracy of the la tter approach is studied for increasing values of the secondary mass.