Quantitative Evaluation of SRS Similarity for Aerospace Testing Applications

The similarity between a shock response spectrum (SRS) and a target shock specification is essential in evaluating the success of a qualification test of a space component. Qualification testing facilities often utilize shock response databases for rapid testing. Traditionally, the comparison of two shocks (SRS) depends on visual evaluation, which is, at best, subjective. This paper compares five different quantitative methods for evaluating shock response similarity. This work aims to find the most suitable metric for retrieving an SRS from a pyroshock database. The five methods are the SRS difference, mean acceleration difference, average SRS ratio, dimensionless SRS coefficients, and mean square goodness-of-fit method. None of the similarity metrics account for the sign of the deviation between the target SRS and database SRS, making it challenging to satisfy the criteria for a good shock test. We propose a metric (the weighted distance) for retrieving the most similar SRS to a target SRS specification from a shock database in this work. The weighted distance outperforms the mean square goodness-of-fit and other metrics in database SRS retrieval for rapid qualification testing.