Reconstruction of Mars Pathfinder Aerothermal Heating and Heatshield Material Response Using Inverse Methods
Author(s)
Mahzari, Milad
Braun, Robert D.
White, Todd R.
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Abstract
The Mars Pathfinder probe entered the Martian atmosphere in 1997 and contained
instrumentation that provided measurements of the SLA heatshield subsurface temperature
at different locations during the entry sequence. These measurements represented the first
Martian aeroheating flight data since the Viking Lander missions. The objective of this
paper is to reconstruct the Pathfinder entry vehicle's aerothermal heating and heatshield
material response using updated modeling tools and approaches in both direct and inverse
manners. The direct approach consists of performing updated Computational Fluid
Dynamics (CFD) calculations on a newly reconstructed entry trajectory to characterize the
vehicle's heating environment. From the calculated heating boundary conditions, the
heat shield in-depth temperature response is computed using an updated thermal response
and ablation model for the SLA material. These predictions are compared directly to the
flight data. In addition to the direct comparison approach, inverse methods are used to
estimate boundary conditions that result in a closer match between the flight data and
subsurface temperature predictions. The unblown surface heat transfer coefficient is
reconstructed as a function of time using whole-time domain least-squares methods in
conjunction with regularization techniques.
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Date
2012-06
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