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Project Oculus is an in-flight deployable mechanical arm/pod system that will accommodate 500 pounds of sensor payload, developed for a C-130 military aircraft. The system is designed for use in counter narco-terrorism and surveillance applications by the Department of Defense and the National Guard [1]. A prototype of the system has been built and is in the testing/analysis phase. The purpose of this study was to analyze the actual stresses and strains in the critical areas found using previous Finite Element (FE) simulations and to ensure that acceptable safety requirements have been met. The system components tested will be redesigned, tested, and reconstructed in the case of unacceptable safety factors or if more reliable methods can be implemented. The system was built to be deployed and retracted in flight, to avoid causing any problems in take off and landing.

In order to prepare for flight on-board a military aircraft with an experimental prototype system, a crash scenario analysis was performed to ensure safety of the aircraft and its crew. The following describes the crash analysis of the Oculus sensor pallet system in preparation for a flight test on a C-130 aircraft. In this particular case, the two units were analyzed individually in accordance with the loading standards outlined in MIL-HDBK-1791. The unit that deploys outside of the rear cargo ramp of the aircraft (sensor platform) was analyzed more closely than the system that remains locked (operator station) into the rail system of the aircraft. As the results show, both systems are capable of being subjected to crash loading forces.

During structural engineering design two of the most overlooked design facets of a finished product is understanding the behavior characteristics of how the product will react when resonated at its natural frequencies and actually defining and understanding the overall vibration profile responsible for the excitation of the structure. A C-130 mechanical arm/pod system has been developed to accommodate 1,000-pounds of sensor payload deployable in flight from a C-130 Hercules military aircraft (variants B thru J). The mechanical arm/pod system will be subjected to a profile of vibration from numerous sources during deployment and while in the final operating position. A general vibration profile for the mechanical arm/pod will be compiled from the plane’s four T-56-A-15 turboprop engines, the atmospheric turbulence and random gust loads.