Investigation of Particle Effects on a Hypersonic Mars Entry

Several successful missions have previously traveled to Mars and been very useful for furthering human understanding of the planet. However, missions in the future will require larger landed masses and decreased uncertainties, especially if a manned mission is being attempted. Therefore, improving current computational tools will be important for meeting these requirements. One event of interest that occurs on Mars is the formation of planet encircling dust storms; these storms sweep dust high into the atmosphere, which could interfere with an entering vehicle’s heat shield. The reasons for the formation of these storms is not well understood, so it not realistic to predict when they will occur and therefore it is vital to characterize how these particles interact with an entry vehicle. Due to the complicated aerothermodynamic nature of the hypersonic flow field, it is challenging to understand the effect these particles will have. Experiments have been performed to investigate these effects; although they show that the addition of particles causes an increase in both heat flux and mass loss of the thermal protection system material, they cannot recreate many of the conditions that are present for a realistic Martian entry. Based on this, it would be desirable to have numerical models that help in the understanding of particle laden hypersonic flows. The goal of the proposed research is to investigate some of these interactions between the particle and the flow field and to model these effects in a way that is useful for current computational tools. As a first step, interactions between the particle and the flow field that are not currently accounted for will be investigated to determine their importance. Based on the small particle size, a useful tool for analysis is this stage is the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. Some of the effects to be considered are particle-shock interactions, particle drag and heat transfer models, phase change of heated particles, and particle interactions with fibrous thermal protection system materials. Then, the effects that are deemed to have a non-negligible impact need to be modeled. Finally, the new models will need to be added to existing computational flid dynamics (CFD) tools. These tools can then be used to more accurately determine the effect atmospheric particulates have.

One event of interest that occurs on Mars is the formation of planet encircling dust storms; these storms sweep dust high into the atmosphere, which could interfere with an entering vehicle’s heat shield. The reasons for the formation of these storms is not well understood, so it not realistic to predict when they will occur and therefore it is vital to characterize how these particles interact with an entry vehicle. Due to the complicated aerothermodynamic nature of the hypersonic flow field, it is challenging to understand the effect these particles will have.

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