Advancing the State of the Art in the Simulation of Parachute Inflation and Descent Dynamics: Multiscale Modeling,Performance Acceleration, and Validation

The enablement of future exploration missions featuring sophisticated robots and the safe landing of heavier spacecraft on Mars calls for advancing the current technology for decelerating a spacecraft from the high speed of atmospheric entry to the final stages of landing on Mars. The refinement of this technology – which is based on inflatable drag devices such as parachute systems – and its expansion for future use at Mars require assistance from predictive simulations grounded in a high-fidelity, multi-disciplinary, multi-scale computational model for parachute inflation dynamics (PID) and drag prediction. To this end, the main objective of this research effort is five-fold: 1) to further advance the state of the art of multiscale modelling of woven fabrics; 2) to accelerate the time-to-solution of a PID problem using a state-of-the-art Eulerian computational technology for the simulation of highly nonlinear fluid-structure interaction (FSI); 3) to demonstrate the ability of this technology to perform predictive FSI simulations of descent for subsonic parachute clusters, including re-contact and pendulum motion; 4) to demonstrate its ability to simulate PID from an initial condition where the parachute geometry is at bag strip; and 5) to validate its capabilities at the system level and in different flow regimes. These objectives will be achieved by developing: an innovative, three-level, macro-meso-micro model for capturing the nonlinear dynamics of woven fabrics with a higher level of fidelity; a state-of-the-art anisotropic adaptive mesh refinement methodology to reduce the time-to-solution; and a disruptive computational approach for eliminating the ubiquitous restriction of the time-step size to advancing the fluid/structure interface no more than one computational fluid cell. The outcome of this research effort is expected to significantly contribute to accelerating the development of ground breaking space technologies; to support future space exploration; and to support NASA's interest in aeronautics, where the predictive simulation of highly nonlinear aeroelastic phenomena remains essential to many of its programs.

This project aims to provide a prediction of supersonic parachute inflation dynamics, supersonic parachute flutter and pulsation, parachute cluster dynamics, parachute descent dynamics including re-contact and pendulum motion, and supersonic parachute drag. Additionally, this project looks at the enhancement of the design and performance of subsonic and supersonic parachutes, and parachute clusters, while reducing testing and cost savings

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