A good agreement between the three works has been observed. In particular, the error of the simulations with respect to the theoretical data is 1.06% for pressure and 0.22% for the temperature.
3.1. Numerical Results
In this section, numerical results of the Schiaparelli casule are shown.
Figure 4 shows the Mach flow field around the capsule and the rigid DGB parachute at their axisymmetric plane. A strong bow shock is detached in front of the capsule at a distance of 0.7 m, and another in front of the canopy at a distance of approximately 1.8 m. Due to the strong bow shock ahead of the capsule and ahead of the canopy, there is a sudden decrease in the Mach number and increase in the pressure and temperature (see
Figure 5). Because of the large deflection angle of the afterbody, the flow begins to expand after the shoulder; the expansion waves intersect at the back of the capsule generating recompression waves that are responsible for the pressure increase and Mach decrease.
Figure 4 showed that the parachute canopy's inner and outer flow fields are low-velocity regions: the Mach number is subsonic. When the supersonic flow enters the parachute canopy and reaches the saturation, it over pressurizes the canopy, and part of the flow moves in the opposite direction, interacting with the shock wave ahead of the canopy, as shown in
Figure 6 (right).
Due to pressure decrease at the leeside of the afterbody, the flow separates and recirculating flow is generated at the back of the vehicle (see
Figure 6). When the separating shear layer merges, this forms a "neck", which compresses the flow, causing a pressure increase. Behind the neck, there is a far wake that extends several body diameters downstream.
Eddies are axisymmetric behind the capsule, while these are non-axisymmetric in the front and behind the parachute. The instantaneous pressure at the bottom inner wall of the canopy is higher than that at the inner upper walls of the canopy, while the mean pressure field in
Figure 5, is shown to be axisymmetric, this explaining the oscillatory movement of the system and its failure.
The maximum averaged pressure is approximately 14400 Pa in front of the capsule and approximately 14900 Pa at the inner surface of the canopy. The maximum instantaneous pressure, at
t= 0.126 s, is nearly 14800 Pa in front of the capsule and nearly 6300 Pa near the inner surface of the canopy. Thereafter, the pressure drops drastically from 14,800 Pa to respectively 1,170 Pa immediately downstream of the capsule and to 1,370 Pa downstream of the canopy and tends to rise due to the vortex structures in the flow. A pressure variation of 5130 Pa within the canopy (as shown in
Figure 6) confirms the inflation behaviour observed experimentally. Another portion of the flow ejects from the parachute band structure, forming an expansion wave that gradually merges with the bow shock in front of the canopy. The remaining fluid flows through the gap and along the disk structure into the turbulent wake region behind the canopy: there, the flow is characterized by complex and turbulent structures, containing eddies, and the supersonic jet flow.
Figure 7a shows that downstream of the capsule, the instantaneous field of the Mach number has a oscillatory behaviour in the wake region, while, in the same region, the mean field is completely axisymmetric. This means that in the wake, the flow field is not steady, but it starts to oscillate with a radius of oscillation of the order of the capsule diameter. Within the neck downstream of the capsule, as shown in
Figure 7c, due to the eddies structures, the flow alternates sonic and supersonic regions. In front of the parachute, the velocity of the flow again drops drastically due to the second bow shock. Downstream of this shock, in front of the canopy, the Mach number in not axisymmetric both in the instantaneous and in the mean flow field: the Mach number at the wind side of the body is 50% higher than in the leeside (see
Figure 7a,b).
Figure 8 shows respectively the vorticity and the x, y, z vorticity components contours.
This figure shows that the flow field is completely laminar at the inlet of the computational domain, i.e. the vorticity is nil. Downstream of the bow shock, it suddenly rise to 1500 Hz. Non dimensional eq. of vorticity (Eq. 1) shows that if the vorticity is zero, it remains nil unless there are strong density and pressure gradients, which cause the baroclinic term to inject eddies into the flow.
Since the non-dimensional inertial term is proportional to 1/M, downstream of the capsule, where the Mach number is subsonic, the inertial term is responsible for the “fluctuations” due to the vorticity structures. Once these structure are created, they are transported downstream and interact with the bow shock upstream of the canopy. The x-vorticity field shows that two counter-rotating structures generate just upstream of the capsule and are transported downstream for about 3 capsule radius. The spanwise x and z components of the vorticity are the highest, respectively of the order of 640 Hz and 1800 Hz. The streamline component is negligible with respect to the others, being of order of 40 Hz.
Figure 9 and
Figure 10 show that the strong interaction of the flow field with the bow shock is responsible for the pressure and density gradients, that in turn are responsible for the vorticity generation by means of the baroclinic term [
16]. Peaks of X-density gradients are of order of 3x10
-2 kg/m
3/m in the x direction, 1.7x10
-1 kg/m
3/m in the y direction and 2x10
-2 kg/m
3/m in the z direction. The density gradients are axisymmetric in the X and Y direction, and not in the z direction, where these are higher on the leeside and lower on the wind side.
As for the pressure gradients, the peaks are of order of 9800 Pa/m in the X-direction, 23000 Pa/m in the Y direction and 2000 Pa/m in the Z direction.
Figure 11a,b show the instantaneous cell Reynolds number contour. The maximum Reynolds number is 1.439*10
6 upstream of the capsule, then it suddenly reduces approximately to 4.98*10
2 downstream of the bow shock. Since the Reynolds number is the ratio between diffusive and inertial times, this means that times required to dissipate the eddies is about 500 times longer than inertial times, therefore eddies are transported downstream, where, these are swallowed by the second bow shock. After the second bow shock, due to the density increase, as shown in Figure 13, the Reynolds number also increases to an approximate value of 5.96*10
4. Crossing this second bow shock, the eddies are strengthened, and the viscous terms are not sufficient to dissipate the turbulence structures.
Figure 12 shows the mean static temperature contour. Due to the sudden decrease in Mach number and rise in the pressure around the vehicle body, a sudden rise in the temperature from 219 K to an approximate value of 382 K can be observed in front of the capsule. The temperature of the flow drops to an average approximate value of 222 K in the wake region, and it again raises at a distance of 0.7m in front of the parachute reaching the maximum value of 404 K inside the canopy region.
Figure 13 shows the density reaches the maximum at the nose of the vehicle with a mean value of 0.1304 kg/m
3 and an instantaneous value of 0.1342 kg/m
3 which immediately drops at the leeside of the afterbody. In the wake region, the instantaneous density flow field has a non-axisymmetric behaviour, while it is axisymmetric in the mean field. In the wake, the density keeps low for several body diameters and it rises when approaching the parachute. The instantaneous density contour shows that the density gradually decreases inside the canopy increasing the drag area behind the canopy and accordingly the turbulence.