• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• 제5권5호
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• pp.581-594
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• 2018

This paper is the follow-on of a previous paper by the author where it was pointed out that the forthcoming, manned exploration missions to Mars, by means of complex geometry spacecraft, involve the study of phenomena like shock wave-boundary layer interaction and shock wave-shock wave interaction also along the entry path in Mars atmosphere. The present paper focuses the chemical effects both in the shock layer and on the surface of a test body along the Mars orbital entry and compares these effects with those along the Earth orbital re-entry. As well known, the Mars atmosphere is almost made up of Carbon dioxide whose dissociation energy is even lower than that of Oxygen. Therefore, although the Mars entry is less energized than the Earth re-entry, one can expect that the effects of chemistry on aerodynamic quantities, both in the shock layer and on a test body surface, are different from those along the Earth re-entry. The study has been carried out computationally by means of a direct simulation Monte Carlo code, simulating the nose of an aero-space-plane and using, as free stream parameters, those along the Mars entry and Earth re-entry trajectories in the altitude interval 60-90 km. At each altitude, three chemical conditions have been considered: 1) gas non reactive and non-catalytic surface, 2) gas reactive and non-catalytic surface, 3) gas reactive and fully-catalytic surface. The results showed that the number of reactions, both in the flow and on the nose surface, is higher for Earth and, correspondingly, also the effects on the aerodynamic quantities.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• 제7권3호
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• pp.229-249
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• 2020

This paper is the logical follow-up of four papers by the author on the subject "aerodynamics in Mars atmosphere". The aim of the papers was to evaluate the influence of two Mars atmosphere models (NASA Glenn and GRAM-2001) on aerodynamics of a capsule (Pathfinder) entering the Mars atmosphere and also to verify the feasibility of evaluating experimentally the ambient density and the ambient pressure by means of the methods by McLaughlin and Cassanto respectively, therefore to correct the values provided by the models. The study was carried out computationally by means of: i) a code integrating the equations of dynamics of an entry capsule for the computation of the trajectories, ii) two Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) codes for the solution of the 2-D, axial-symmetric and 3-D flow fields around the capsule in the altitude interval 50-100 km. The computations verified that the entry trajectories of Pathfinder from the two models, in terms of the Mach, Reynolds and Knudsen numbers, were very different. The aim of the present paper is to continue this study, considering other aerodynamic problems and then to provide a contribution to a long series of papers on the subject "aerodynamics in Mars atmosphere". More specifically, the present paper evaluated and quantified the effects from the two models of: i) chemical reactions on aerodynamic quantities in the shock layer, ii) surface temperature, therefore of the contribution of the re-emitted molecules, on local (pressure, skin friction, etc.) and on global (drag) quantities, iii) surface recombination reactions (catalyticity) on heat flux. The results verified that the models heavily influence the flow field (as per the shock wave structure) but, apart from the surface recombination reactions, the effects of the different conditions on aerodynamics of the capsule are negligible for both models and confirmed what already found in the previous paper that, because of the higher values of density from the NASA Glenn model, the effects on aerodynamics of a entry capsule are stronger than those computed by the GRAM-2001 model.