Selection criteria for parachutes of student-built sounding rockets

Various parachute-type decelerators can be considered in the design of a sounding rocket recovery system. During the development of various flagship missions of Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineering (DARE), the Parachute Research Group of DARE has developed several methods and criteria to select the right parachutes for a given mission. This paper presents and discusses the operational envelopes, advantages, and disadvantages of different parachute types. The parachutes described in the paper are variations of cross parachutes, disk-gap-bands, ringsails, conical ribbon parachutes, and hemisflo ribbon parachutes. Variants of these parachute types have previously been developed in-house and flown, allowing for acquaintance with their design, manufacturing and performance. Apart from the more traditional parachutes used for student-built sounding rockets, this paper will also cover the opportunities and challenges that are associated with the use of less conventional parachutes, such as ringsails, ringslots, and parafoils. Each parachute is described in detail after which all are compared to one another based on several sets of typical requirements. Factors that influence the parachute selection process are, for example, the parachute flight envelope, stability behaviour, and manufacturing complexity.