Development and Testing of a Drogue Parachute System for X-37 ALTV / B-52H Separation

Whitmore, Stephen A.; Cobleigh, Brent R.; Jacobson, Steven R.; Jensen, Steven C.; Hennings, Elsa

doi:10.2514/6.2004-873

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…(15) A novel parachute separation technique was developed to prevent X-37 recontact. (16) However, the B-52 was ultimately abandoned in favor of White Knight 1 for cost and technical reasons (see section IV-G).…”

Section: E Boeing B-52 Stratofortressmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges of CPAS Flight Testing

Ray

Morris²

2011

21st AIAA Aerodynamic Decelerator Systems Technology Conference and Seminar

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Crew Exploration Vehicle Parachute Assembly System (CPAS) is being designed to land the Orion Crew Module (CM) at a safe rate of descent at splashdown via a series of Drogue, Pilot, and Main parachutes. Because Orion is considerably larger and heavier than Apollo, many of the flight test techniques developed during the Apollo program must be modified. The Apollo program had a dedicated C-133 aircraft, which was modified to allow a simple airdrop of "boilerplate" flight test vehicles. However, the CPAS program must use either commercial or military assets with minimal modifications to airframes or procedures. Conceptual envelopes from 2-Degree Of Freedom trajectories are presented for several existing and novel architectures. Ideally, the technique would deliver a representative capsule shape to the desired altitude and dynamic pressure at test initiation. However, compromises must be made on the characteristics of trajectories or the fidelity of test articles to production hardware. Most of the tests to date have used traditional pallet and weight tub or missile-shaped test vehicles. New test vehicles are being designed to better incorporate Orion structural components and deploy parachutes in a more representative fashion. The first attempt to test a capsule-shaped vehicle failed due to unexpected events while setting up the test condition through a series of complex procedures. In order to avoid the loss of another expensive test article which will delay the program, simpler deployment methods are being examined and more positive control of the vehicle will be maintained. Existing challenges include interfacing with parent aircraft, separating test vehicles, achieving test conditions, and landing within limited test ranges. All these challenges must be met within cost and schedule limits. Nomenclature

show abstract

Section: E Boeing B-52 Stratofortressmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges of CPAS Flight Testing

Ray

Morris²

2011

21st AIAA Aerodynamic Decelerator Systems Technology Conference and Seminar

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This same unit was used to test a candidate drogue system for the X-37 approach and landing test vehicle (ALTV). 3,4,5 HIVAS allows using the full scale hardware while a wind tunnel would require either a large cross section (and therefore expensive run time) or using subscale models with inherent differences in stiffness and resolution. However, because the deployment is not representative of flight, inflation parameters cannot be determined from HIVAS.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing Small CPAS Parachutes Using HIVAS

Ray

Hennings

Bernatovich

2013

AIAA Aerodynamic Decelerator Systems (ADS) Conference

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The High Velocity Airflow System (HIVAS) facility at the Naval Air Warfare Center (NAWC) at China Lake was successfully used as an alternative to flight test to determine parachute drag performance of two small Capsule Parachute Assembly System (CPAS) canopies. A similar parachute with known performance was also tested as a control. Realtime computations of drag coefficient were unrealistically low. This is because HIVAS produces a non-uniform flow which rapidly decays from a high central core flow. Additional calibration runs were performed to characterize this flow assuming radial symmetry from the centerline. The flow field was used to post-process effective flow velocities at each throttle setting and parachute diameter using the definition of the momentum flux factor. Because one parachute had significant oscillations, additional calculations were required to estimate the projected flow at off-axis angles. The resulting drag data from HIVAS compared favorably to previously estimated parachute performance based on scaled data from analogous CPAS parachutes. The data will improve drag area distributions in the next version of the CPAS Model Memo.

show abstract

Development and Testing of a Drogue Parachute System for X-37 ALTV / B-52H Separation

Cited by 2 publications

References 5 publications

Challenges of CPAS Flight Testing

Challenges of CPAS Flight Testing

Testing Small CPAS Parachutes Using HIVAS

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About