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This final report, dated September 10, 1996, was prepared by the Research Triangle Institute for the Department of the Air Force's 45th and 30th Space Wing safety offices. Titled Modeling Unlikely Space-Booster Failures in Risk Calculations, it shows how rare Mode-5 failures, in which a rocket veers well off its intended flight line, are modeled in the DAMP risk-analysis program. An appendix lists Atlas, Delta, Titan and Thor launch and failure histories through August 1996.
From the source:Release of 2026-05-08 Incident: 9/10/96, N/A. This report describes the Modeling of Unlikely Space-Booster Failures in Risk Calculations, documenting historical launch failure modes and recommending corrective actions to address them using novel modelling techniques.
5.3 Relative Probability of Tumble for Response-Modes 3 and 4 Exponential filters with values of F from 0.98 to 0.999 have been used to- estimate the percentage of Mode-3 and Mode-4 •responses that tenninate with a thrusting tumble. Results are given· in Table 18 for flight phases 0 - 2 and 0 - 5. For launch-area risk calculations, only flight phases O- 2 are of interest. The data sample was a chronological composite of all Atlas, Delta, Titan, and Thor tests and configurations shown in Appendix D. To several decimal places at least, the values in the table are determined entirely from Mode-4 responses, since the last vehicle to experience a Mode-3 response (4/25/61) is weighted out of the solution: The results in Table 18 are based ona total sample size of 1,186 flight tests. Table 18. Percent of Response Modes 3 and 4 That Tumble . Filter Factor Flight Phases O- 2 Flie.:ht Phases 0 - 5 0.999 25.0 25.0 0.996 26.3 27.0 0.993 27.3 28.6 0.990 28.3 30.1 0.980 31.3 34.8 Through flight phase 2, there were 33 tumbles out of a total of 132 Mode-3 and Mode-4 responses. Through flight phase 5, there were 42 tumbles out of 168 Mode-3 and Mode-4 responses. As seen from Table 13, the smaller the filter factor, the greater the weight placed on recent test data. In view of this, it is apparent from Table 18 that the percentage of Mode-4 responses that end with a thrusting tumble has been increasing gradually. The same conclusion is reached for flight phases 0 - 2 and 0 - 5. In recognition of this gradual increase, in future studies RTI will assume that approximately one-third of Mode-3 and Mode-4 failure responses end with a thrusting tumble. 9/10/96 30
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Report, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 181 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.