Digital Reconstruction Supporting Investigation of Mishaps

In support of investigations of mishaps like the crash of the space shuttle Columbia, a process based on digital reconstruction from recovered components has been developed. The process is expected to reduce the need for physical reconstruction from recovered parts, reduce the time and cost of determining the cause of a mishap, and provide information useful in redesigning to prevent future mishaps. The process involves utilization of pre-existing techniques, hardware, and software to capture sizes and shapes of recovered parts in sets of digital data. The data are manipulated to enable rendering of captured geometric information by use of computer-aided design (CAD) and viewing software. The digitization of a part and study of its spatial relationship with other parts is taken to one of three levels of successively greater detail, depending on its importance to the investigation. The process includes a trajectory-analysis subprocess in which information from the digital reconstruction is combined with locations of recovered parts to reduce the area that must be searched to find other specified parts that have not yet been recovered. The digital product of the process is compatible with preexisting CAD and solid-model-rendering software.