The purpose of this project was to observe the effects of aircraft wake on a parachute. The situation involves multiple aircraft deploying paratroopers, where the wake flow experienced by the parachute is from the leading aircraft. The scenario is pictured below.
Procedure
In this computation we modeled a single layer round parachute. The mesh was comprised of tetrahedral elements and for this model the number of nodes=339443 and the number of elements=2110052.
While this project only involved the study of the parachute, we the Multi-DomainMethod developed by the T*AFSM>. The three subdomains are shown below: the cargo plane, the wake, and the parachute. The cargo plane and wake were previously computed and then applied to the boundary conditions for the parachute.
Subdomain 1
Subdomain 2
Subdomain 3
Results
To fully understand the effect of the wake, we simulated both a wake and no-wake case. For the wake case we simulated with the parachute posistioned behind the flap of the aircraft with the inflow conditions set to 60 degress, corresponding to a specific point on the trajectory of the parachute. The light blue region to the left of the wake case is the wake from the aircraft. The light blue color indicates a slower velocity.
We also plotted the drag and the z-moment of each case. It can be observed that for the wake case, both the drag and z-moment are smaller than for that of the no-wake case. This is due to the slower velocity of the wake as compared to the free-stream velocity.(Blue->no wake, Green->Wake)
Drag
Z-moment
Conclusions
Through this simulation it was shown that this method yields a successful computation. We were able to effectively capture the wake effect on the parachute and compare it to a no-wake situation. For future study, the parachute can be simulated in different locations behind the aircraft.
Go to Effect of Element Size on Flow Solution
