Download a detailed course description.
USV — Understanding Structural Verification
for Space–mission Hardware
Course Overview: This three–day course for nonstructural engineers provides a rigorous yet understandable look at what it takes to ensure space hardware is structurally safe for flight and able to meet mission objectives. Emphasis is on concepts, processes, and what to look for rather than on equations. The objectives are to improve your understanding of:
- Structural requirements and flight environments
- How structures and materials behave and how they fail
- How to establish (or recognize) sound plans, criteria, and processes for ensuring payloads can safely withstand launch and other flight environments
- How to document verification
- How to assess risk when problems arise
Target Audience: Nonstructural engineers and managers involved in ensuring that launch vehicles and their payloads are structurally ready to fly. Note: This course is a condensed combination of two other Instar courses: SMS (Space-Mission Structures: From Concept to Launch) and ESV (Effective Structural Verification for Space Programs), aimed at a broader audience, with fewer equations and analysis details. The USV course does not address design.
Course Developers and Instructors: Tom Sarafin and Poti Doukas
Course Length: Three full days or five 5–hour days; four–full–day version available with added topics.