Eventos Anais de eventos
ENCIT 2020
18th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
ALTITUDE EFFECTS ON INFLATABLE AERODYNAMIC DECELERATORS FOR CUBESAT REENTRY AND RECOVERY
Submission Author:
Rodrigo Palharini , SP
Co-Authors:
Rodrigo Palharini
Presenter: Rodrigo Palharini
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2020.CIT20-0750
Abstract
During atmospheric reentry, a high-temperature shock wave is formed in front of the vehicle. In order to protect the crew and experiments, external insulation materials composed by a rigid aeroshell have been used. Reinforced carbon-carbon, low- and high-temperature reusable surface insulation tiles, and felt reusable surface insulation blankets are just some of the materials that have been employed to protect the spacecraft during the harsh reentry environment. With the advance of manufacturing processes and the development of flexible high-temperature materials, a new trend has emerged: the use of Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (IAD) as thermal protection system. IADs technology is of great interest because such devices inflate to their full size in space and are not directly constrained by the launch vehicle payload shroud diameter like rigid aeroshells, nor inflation conditions like parachutes. They can provide both deceleration and thermal protection capabilities decreasing the entry vehicle complexity, providing a more reliable and efficient way to deliver payloads onto the surface of a planet. Another benefit is that IADs can be deployed either exo-atmospherically or during the hypersonic phase of flight, which allows an increased timeline before touch-down. In addition, this system can be used to protect CubeSats during the reentry making them reusable, further decreasing their costs. The main goal of this paper is to investigate the altitude effect during the reentry phase of a cubeSat with an inflatable aerodynamic decelerator. According to the results, the altitude had a significant impact on the properties along the stagnation line and shock wave structure.
Keywords
CubeSat Reentry, Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator, DSMC.
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