A major cause of overtesting of spacecraft, aerospace and flight hardware during random and swept sine vibration tests is associated with differences between the mechanical impedance of the shaker and mounting fixture, and the standard practice of controlling the input acceleration to the frequency envelope of the flight data. The result is artificially high shaker forces and responses at the resonance frequencies of the test item. These high forces can damage expensive payloads.
In aerospace projects, there are no “do overs.” Even minor errors can prove expensive or deadly. NASA’s $125 million Mars Climate Observer burned up in the Martian atmosphere when the manufacturer gave NASA English measurements for thrust, rather than metric units. A loose piece of foam cost seven shuttle astronauts their lives.
AS 9102 has been the aerospace industry standard for first article inspections for more than five years. An aerospace supply chain quality engineer will likely have two comments about AS 9102. The first will be that AS 9102 has brought much needed discipline and consistency to the first article process. Then they will say that AS 9102 compliance requires considerable effort and commitment of resources.
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