Modeling, Simulation and Validation of Supersonic Parachute Inflation Dynamics during Mars Landing

Abstract

A high fidelity multi-physics Eulerian computational framework is presented for the simulation of supersonic parachute inflation during Mars landing. Unlike previous investigations in this area, the framework takes into account an initial folding pattern of the parachute, the flow compressibility effect on the fabric material porosity, and the interactions between supersonic fluid flows and the suspension lines. Several adaptive mesh refinement (AMR)-enabled, large edge simulation (LES)-based, simulations of a full-size disk-gapband (DGB) parachute inflating in the low-density, low-pressure, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) Martian atmosphere are reported. The comparison of the drag histories and the first peak forces between the simulation results and experimental data collected during the NASA Curiosity Rover's Mars atmospheric entry shows reasonable agreements. Furthermore, a rudimentary material failure analysis is performed to provide an estimate of the safety factor for the parachute decelerator system. The proposed framework demonstrates the potential of using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI)-based simulation tools for future supersonic parachute design. Nomenclature

A computationally tractable framework for nonlinear dynamic multiscale modeling of membrane woven fabrics

“…Figure 10 reports the time‐histories of the total drag force predicted by the coupled, fluid–structure simulations described above. For validation and reference, respectively, this figure includes the measured time‐history of the total drag generated by the parachute system during the Mars landing of NASA's rover Curiosity 32 and its counterpart predicted using the same aforementioned simulation but equipped with the classical St. Venant–Kirchhoff model 34 . The reader can observe that the NN‐ReLU and NN‐ReLU‐W20 surrogate microscale models deliver stable results that are in reasonably good agreement with the flight data.…”

“…Finally, the proposed computational homogenization framework is equipped with the previously trained NN‐ReLU models and applied here to simulate the supersonic inflation dynamics of a NASA DGB parachute system in the low‐density, low‐pressure, supersonic Martian atmosphere 32‐34 . While such a coupled, multiscale, fluid–structure simulation is crucial to the understanding of the effects of a woven fabric material on the performance of a parachute during the deceleration process, its main purpose here is twofold: (1) demonstrate the computational tractability of the proposed computational framework for a realistic application; and (2) to validate (partially) it using flight data from the landing on Mars of NASA's rover Curiosity.…”

“…The simulation discussed herein starts from the line stretch stage where the suspension line subsystem is deployed, the canopy is folded (see Figure 8‐right) and the entire system is prestressed by the folding pattern 34 . The incoming supersonic flow is at the state defined by the free‐stream conditions M ∞ = 1.8, kg m −3 and p ∞ = 260 Pa.…”

Discrete embedded boundary method with smooth dependence on the evolution of a fluid‐structure interface

“…Under the standard FIVER framework, for an edge connecting an active node V i to an inactive node V j ( j = 0), it recovers the numerical inviscid flux function (8). Hence if j is substituted with its counterpart smoothness indicator nodal function defined using only the active and inactive nodal statuses (see Figure 7), the universal flux function (19) recovers all aspects of the standard FIVER framework pertaining to the semi-discretization of the inviscid fluxes.…”

“…Most recently, FIVER was equipped with adaptive mesh refinement 16 and validated for the prediction of the drag generated by the parachute system of NASA's Curiosity rover during its deployment for Mars landing. [17][18][19] As stated in Section 1, the main objective of this paper which focuses on FSI is to further expand the scope of the FIVER framework for EBMs to shape sensitivity computations by eliminating its susceptibilities to discrete events. This section sets the context for this objective, briefly overviews the FIVER framework for EBMs, and highlights the parts of this framework that are susceptibile to discrete events.…”