Deployable aerobrakes for Earth re-entry capsules may offer many advantages in the near future, including the opportunity to recover on Earth payloads and samples from Space with reduced risks and costs with respect to conventional systems. Such capsules can be accommodated in the selected launcher in folded configuration (optimizing the available volume) and, when foreseen by the mission profile, the aerobrake can be deployed in order to increase the surface exposed to the hypersonic flow and therefore to reduce the ballistic parameter. The ballistic parameter reduction offers as main advantage the opportunity to perform an aerodynamic de-orbit of the system without the need of a dedicated propulsive subsystem and an atmospheric re-entry with reduced aerothermal and mechanical loads. It makes also possible the use of relatively lightweight and cheap thermal protection materials (like the ceramic fabrics successfully tested in hypersonic plasma wind tunnels). Furthermore, the deployable surface can be modulated for the aerodynamic control of the de-orbit trajectory in order to correctly target the capsule towards the selected landing site. The aerodynamic de-orbit capability can be also exploited to implement alternative methods for the Space debris attenuation, which is becoming more and more important due to the growing number of micro, nano and pico-satellites launched every year in Low Earth Orbit. The main objective of the present thesis is to perform aerothermodynamic and mission analyses of re-entry systems characterized by deployable heat shields. In particular, the study has been focused on the assessment of the wide range of scientific applications offered by this technology and on the development of technological demonstrators for the experimental verification of its effectiveness and functionality along different flight profiles. The main outcomes of the study include the preliminary definition of the analyzed missions and of the corresponding deployment mechanism, the aerodynamic and ...


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    Title :

    Aerothermodynamic and mission analyses of deployable aerobraking Earth re-entry systems


    Contributors:

    Publication date :

    2014-03-30


    Remarks:

    Carandente, Valerio (2014) Aerothermodynamic and mission analyses of deployable aerobraking Earth re-entry systems. [Tesi di dottorato]


    Type of media :

    Theses


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    Italian , English


    Classification :

    DDC:    620 / 629




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