(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2012-06)
Cruz-Ayoroa, Juan G.; Kazemba, Cole D.; Steinfeldt, Bradley A.; Kelly, Jenny R.; Clark, Ian G.; Braun, Robert D.
As the required payload masses for planetary
entry systems increase, innovative entry vehicle
decelerator systems are becoming a topic of
interest. With this interest comes a growing need
for the capability to characterize the performance
of such decelerators. This work proposes a first-order
mass model for fully-rigid deployable
decelerator systems. The analytical methodology
that is presented can be applied to a wide range of
entry conditions and material properties for rapid
design space exploration. The tool is applied to a
case study of a C/SiC hot structure decelerator at
Mars for comparison to the performance of the
Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator
concepts presented in a recent EDL-SA study.
Results show that the performance of a rigid
deployable structure can be comparable to that of
a Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator
at high entry ballistic coefficients and small
decelerator diameters.