Advancing Further the State of the Art of Fluid-Structure Interaction for Supersonic Parachute Inflation Dynamics

NASA landed several rovers on Mars, but none weighed more than 1 ton. As long as parachutes are used to assist in Mars landing, one limiting factor is their size which increases with the weight of the rover. Recent flight tests revealed failures of larger parachutes and exposed the need to research computational fluid-structure interaction (FSI) models that accurately predict the performance and structural integrity of future supersonic parachute systems. Under NASA-ESI and NASA-JPL fundings, AERO Suite developed by Stanford University made significant progress in simulating supersonic parachute inflation dynamics (SPID). It was validated with the drag time-histories recorded during the landing of Curiosity and the ASPIRE flight test SR03. However, AERO Suite needs further enhancements to become a unique NASA asset for SPID problems. In particular: 1. AERO Suite was demonstrated for SPID, using however a heuristic initial condition where the parachute is in the line-stretch configuration and the canopy in accordion-folding shape; NASA flight recordings reveal however that such a configuration is never encountered. Hence, the first objective of this proposal is to develop a computational technology grounded in 3D Hilbert space filling curves to enable SPID simulations from the initial condition where the parachute geometry is at bag strip. 2. AERO Suite is affordable for the simulation of SPID on HPC systems. However, it remains computationally intensive when FSI effects at the suspension lines must be captured, due to added mesh resolution requirements. Thus, another objective is to develop physics-informed machine learning approaches for modeling FSI effects at suspension lines and accelerating further AERO Suite. The success of this project will directly contribute to the goals of the Entry, Descent, and Landing to Enable Planetary Science Missions program of the Space Technology Mission Directorate: it will aid researchers at NASA-JPL and NASA-ARC in developing/testing future supersonic parachutes.

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