Study on transient aerodynamic characteristics of parachute opening process

• 来源期刊: 力学学报（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2007,（6）
• 页码范围: 627-633
• 页数: 7页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

In the research of parachute, canopy inflation process modeling is one of the most complicated tasks. As canopy often experiences the largest deformations and loa-dings during a very short time, it is of great difficulty for theoretical analysis and experimental measurements. In this paper, aerodynamic equations and structural dynamics equa-tions were developed for describing parachute opening process, and an iterative coupling solving strategy incorpo-rating the above equations was proposed for a small-scale, flexible and flat-circular parachute. Then, analyses were car-ried out for canopy geometry, time-dependent pressure diffe-rence between the inside and outside of the canopy, transient vortex around the canopy and the flow field in the radial plane as a sequence in opening process. The mechanism of the canopy shape development was explained from perspective of transient flow fields during the inflation process. Experi-ments of the parachute opening process were conducted in a wind tunnel, in which instantaneous shape of the canopy was measured by high velocity camera and the opening loading was measured by dynamometer balance. The theoretical pre-dictions were found in good agreement with the experimen-tal results, validating the proposed approach. This numerical method can improve the situation of strong dependence of parachute research on wind tunnel tests, and is of signifi-cance to the understanding of the mechanics of parachute inflation process.