Static wind tunnel testing of a legged venus lander

Clara O’Farrell, Graham E. Merrifield, Jason Rabinovitch

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

A static wind tunnel test was conducted to determine the static aerodynamic coeficients of the surface lander design proposed by the Venus In-Situ Atmospheric and Geochemical Explorer (VISAGE). The baseline design of the lander consists of a spherical pressure vessel with a top-mounted circular drag plate for aerodynamic deceleration, and three fixed landing legs. A modular subscale lander model, which allowed testing of several drag plate and landing leg configurations, was fabricated using rapid-prototyping techniques. The model was tested with four different drag plates and three different leg configurations, at a dynamic pressure of 1610 Pa and Mach number of 0.15. Testing was conducted using legs of varying diameter in order to determine the appropriate scaling of the results to Reynolds numbers representative of terminal descent at Venus. The static aerodynamic force (axial, normal, and side), and moment (rolling, pitching, yawing) coefficients for each lander configuration were determined as a function of model orientation. All model configurations were found to be statically stable in the range of total angles of attack considered (0 to 30 deg). However, the drag performance and degree of static stability of the model were dependent on the dihedral angle of the circular drag plate. The results will enable the creation of a preliminary aerodatabase for the VISAGE lander concept, and allow the effect of design changes on aerodynamic performance to be evaluated.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication24th AIAA Aerodynamic Decelerator Systems Technology Conference, 2017
DOIs
StatePublished - 2017
Event24th AIAA Aerodynamic Decelerator Systems Technology Conference, 2017 - Denver, United States
Duration: 5 Jun 20179 Jun 2017

Publication series

Name24th AIAA Aerodynamic Decelerator Systems Technology Conference, 2017

Conference

Conference24th AIAA Aerodynamic Decelerator Systems Technology Conference, 2017
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityDenver
Period5/06/179/06/17

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