Optimal two-stage parachute and retro motor sizing for launch vehicle stage recovery
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Sådhanå (2020)45:241 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12046-020-01420-3
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Optimal two-stage parachute and retro motor sizing for launch vehicle stage recovery PANKAJ PRIYADARSHI* , LEYA JOSEPH and KAMAL SAROHA Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Trivandrum 695022, India e-mail: [email protected] MS received 27 March 2019; revised 9 December 2019; accepted 14 February 2020 Abstract. A deceleration system consisting of staged parachute clusters and retro thrusters is optimized for the recovery of the first stage of a launch vehicle on sea. Optimal mass as well as reduction in speed by each parachute cluster and the retro thrusters is essential to minimize the inherent payload loss due to inclusion of additional systems. Three disciplines are involved in the study, namely parachute design, grain design and Three Degrees of Freedom (3-DOF) trajectory simulations. Parachute components are sized and their masses are estimated using a parachute design code. It computes the number of parachutes in the cluster, their sizes and opening loads for multiple reefing stages. Solid motor grain design is carried out, using high burn rate propellant, to provide high thrust to decelerate the launch vehicle stage to a near-zero descent rate at touchdown. A Multiobjective Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (M2 DO) problem has been formulated to minimize the mass of the deceleration system and minimize the touchdown speed of the recovered stage, subject to constraints on Maximum Expected Operating Pressure (MEOP), feasibility, etc. The optimization is carried out and the Pareto optimal front is obtained using an in-house multi-objective optimization algorithm, Attractor Anchored Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithm (A2 -MOEA). A total of twenty-five design variables are considered including initial conditions for each deceleration stage, size of parachute cluster components for both drogue and main parachutes, and the size and shape of the solid motor grain for retro rockets. It is seen that the two objectives are conflicting. The Pareto optimal designs are discussed and the variation of design variables is presented. Keywords. Multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO); multiobjective multidisciplinary design optimization (M2DO); stage recovery; parachute cluster; solid motor grain design; three degrees of freedom (3DOF) trajectory simulations; multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA); A2-MOEA.
1. Introduction Recovery of the booster stage of launch vehicles has been studied extensively for reducing the cost of access to space. The high energy of the stage has to be dissipated before its touchdown on land or sea. This is carried out typically by either using the vehicle propulsion or employing aerodynamic decelerators. For final stage of the recovery, hovering, impact attenuators and even mid-air recovery techniques have been studied. A high Technology Readiness Level (TRL) stage recovery system named ParachuteRetro-Float (P-R-F) is proposed, which employs multistage par
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