Separation characteristics for front cover of ejection launch canister with low impact

The reliability of unlocking and separation during missile launching is a design challenge for canister front cover. An ejection cover with low impact, which contains a spring to store impact energies and an inclined plate to change the direction of separation force, is proposed to solve this problem. Considering the separation process of this cover, a dynamic model is built to predict the cover separation trajectory, and two criterions are put forward to judge the reliability of separation. Then some typical design parameters influencing separation characteristics, including the angle of inclined plate, the stiffness and the compression length of the spring, are investigated in detail based on experimental design method and response surface method to achieve optimization results that satisfy the reliable separation criterions. Moreover, the virtual prototype experiment based on the multi-body dynamics model is utilized to verify the cover separation process. The result shows that the front cover with optimized parameters could separate reliably for missile launching, and the dynamic model predicting the separating trajectory is reasonable.