Effects of Aerodynamics on Line Sail During Parachute Deployment

Abstract

This paper presents a dynamic model to numerically simulate the parachute deployment for space vehicle recovery system. In the proposed dynamic model, the deployment bag and the space vehicle are treated as a six-degree-of-freedom rigid body with mass varied and a regular six-degree-of-freedom rigid body, respectively. The parachute system is considered as the mass spring damper model, in which the canopy, suspension lines, risers and bridles are discretized into some three-degree-of-freedom segments with their centralized mass on the end points. During the deployment a notable phenomenon can be observed and so-called line sail. The line sail generally occurs during a deployment in which the relative wind is not parallel to the deployment direction. The line sail has been known to cause or contribute to the following problems: increased deployment times, changes in snatch load, asymmetrical deployment, friction damage, and unpredictable canopy inflation. To understand its mechanisms, the effects of aerodynamics such as angle of flight path, deployment bag ejection velocity, Mach number, air density and wind velocity are numerically investigated.