Supersonic descent staging aerodynamic and performance analysis

Supersonic retropropulsion;Supersonic descent vehicle staging;Supersonic descent vehicle reconfigurations;Human Mars;Supersonic vehicle reconfiguration

Blette, David Joseph ; Clarke, John-Paul Aerospace Engineering Braun, Robert German, Brian Campbell, Charles Dutta, Soumyo ; Clarke, John-Paul

University:Georgia Institute of Technology

Department:Aerospace Engineering

关键词: Supersonic retropropulsion;    Supersonic descent vehicle staging;    Supersonic descent vehicle reconfigurations;    Human Mars;    Supersonic vehicle reconfiguration;   

Others  :  https://smartech.gatech.edu/bitstream/1853/62713/1/BLETTE-DISSERTATION-2020.pdf

美国|英语

来源: SMARTech Repository

【 摘 要 】

Supersonic Retropropulsion (SRP) is one potential enabling technology to extend Mars entry, descent, and landing (EDL) capability beyond current Viking-era technological landed mass upper limits of 1 mT to human-class landed payloads requiring 20-40 mT. To utilize SRP for human Mars missions, it is necessary to perform supersonic descent vehicle staging to transform an entry vehicle from its hypersonic configuration to a configuration that enables the use of SRP. These reconfigurations may require jettisoning the vehicle aeroshell as debris during supersonic flight. The ejected debris present risk to catastrophically recontact the primary descent vehicle during and after ejection. The flight dynamics of the ejected debris are complicated by supersonic interference aerodynamics between the primary descent vehicle and the ejected debris. The development of strategies to understand and mitigate debris recontact risk during supersonic descent vehicle reconfigurations is paramount to advancing SRP technology readiness level and therefore to enabling human missions to Mars. However, supersonic descent vehicle staging has not been flight proven and published research in the field is non-existent. The methodology developed in this thesis represents the first assessment of supersonic descent staging aerodynamic and performance analysis. The methodology addresses a gap in current analysis capability by providing the means to rapidly, quantitatively, and competitively evaluate a variety of proposed supersonic vehicle staging architectures to determine a subset of fittest candidates for further detailed investigation. Quantitative methodology output metrics consist of required ejection subsystem performance for a variety of jettison initiation conditions and jettison maneuver durations. The methodology also serves as a risk mitigation tool by enabling users to specify tolerable levels of recontact risk posed to the primary descent vehicle by the ejected debris. The methodology employs an iterative process between three primary analysis modules. The first module analyzes a piece of debris to determine the spatial flight envelope of the debris when it undergoes uncontrolled tumbling. The second module determines nominal flight trajectories that the debris must fly post-separation to ensure minimum offset distances are achieved between the primary vehicle and the debris before uncontrolled debris tumbling begins. The third module determines uncertainties about the nominal transit trajectories. The methodology iterates until successive solutions converge. The methodology is demonstrated on a 10x30 meter ellipsled entry vehicle utilizing a symmetric clam-shell supersonic aeroshell jettison maneuver for a reference human Mars mission. As a supplement to the methodology contribution, multi-fidelity modeling techniques are evaluated for applicability toward generating surrogate models of expensive interference aerodynamic responses by leveraging available inexpensive isolated aerodynamic response data. Multi-fidelity modeling techniques are found to improve the accuracy and k-fold cross-validation metrics of interference aerodynamics drag coefficient surrogate models as compared to single-fidelity modeling techniques. Multi-fidelity modeling techniques performed particularly well for models built from sparse sets of interference data.