Design and simulation of hydraulic system for launch vehicle holding device

The responsibility of the vehicle holding device (VHD) is to hold the launch vehicle while it is stayed on launch pad and release the holding mechanism to allow a lift-off of launch vehicle at a moment of lift-off. During a release of the holding mechanism, in order to prevent the Ka doing a doing a doing mode which is vertical oscillation of entire liquid propellant and very severe for vehicle structure, gradual release of holding force is required. Also, a release operation of all 4 VHD should be synchronized very precisely. In this study, to comply the "gradual release and synchronized operation requirement", concept of VHD hydraulic system using an accumulator, pyro valve and orifice to control speed of hydraulic cylinder is proposed instead of using complicated hydraulic components. Then through multi-body dynamic analysis and computational hydraulic analysis, a size of orifice to meet a target speed of hydraulic cylinder is calculated. Through this study, simple and reliable VHD hydraulic system complying requirements is designed.