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Seeing Sound Software©
A launch vehicle and its launch facilities are subjected to intense acoustic loads generated by the vehicle's propulsion system. The vehicle, its payload, and facilities must be designed to withstand these loads to ensure mission safety and success. Accurately accounting for the acoustic environment early in the design phase of a new launch vehicle is a high priority. Governments and aerospace entities expend significant resources investigating launch acoustics using a combination of predictive models, full-scale and subscale tests, and test flights. Sensors that acquire acoustic data are deployed over a limited geometry and do not sample the full three-dimensional volume exposed to the acoustic field. Launch imagery samples that three-dimensional volume. Under appropriate conditions, rapidly varying condensation features are generated by the lift-off acoustic field and are recorded in launch imagery.
The Seeing Sound Software© is image analysis software that was developed to characterize a launch vehicle's lift-off acoustic field by examining these rapidly varying condensation features. It was developed with funding from the NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Fluid Dynamics Group. During real-world tests, the software proved to be broadly applicable to topics beyond characterization of the lift-off acoustic field.
It has been used in direct support of NASA's SLS design activities, including analysis of the SLS water deluge system during a scale model test
and analysis of the SLS hydrogen burn-off igniter system test.
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