Numerical Study of Parachute Dropping Based on Moving Meshes Method

Abstract

That the rapid increasing calculation amount caused by large calculation domain has limited the parachute dropping numerical researches. To solve this problem, the traditional fixed Euler meshes were replaced by moving Lagrange meshes to describe the flow field, and then the parachute dropping process was calculated by FSI (Fluid Structure Interaction) method in this paper. A typical plane parachute was taken as the research object. The flow field surrounding the parachute-payload system was defined as the calculation domain firstly. Both the flow field and structure field were discretized by finite elements. The moving velocity of fluid meshes was calculated according to the displacement of the payload in global coordinates. In other words, the graphical deformation principle was applied to realize the computational domain followed the parachute-payload system. Then the calculation of parachute opening process was carried on in this finite space by FSI method. At last, the abundant flow field and structure field information and the deceleration characteristics curves such as velocity and acceleration were obtained by this method. In order to verify the accuracy of this method, the deceleration characteristics results were compared with experimental results. The moving meshes method could decrease the calculation amount and provide abundant results information. The method used in this paper also could provide a reference for other inflatable fabrics numerical researches.