Engineers working on Mars mission parachutes have made a breakthrough in understanding how the fabric itself affects landing performance, research that could improve future planetary missions.
With allocations from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) ACCESS program on the Anvil supercomputer at Purdue University’s Rosen Center for Advanced Computing (RCAC), Danial Ghasimi, a Ph.D. student at Stevens Institute of Technology in the Rabinovitch Research Group, led a study that focused on parachute broadcloth. This thin, woven material used to make parachutes has enabled numerous spacecraft to land safely on the surface of Mars, including the recent Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. While this material may appear to be simple on the surface, the fabric’s complex structure of tiny fibers and microscopic pores creates significant challenges for engineers trying to predict how parachutes will perform.
“The small-scale features of the fabric – the individual fibers and tiny gaps between them – are incredibly difficult to resolve in full-scale parachute simulations,” explained Jason Rabinovitch, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Stevens. “These microscopic details can significantly impact how air flows through the material, affecting the parachute’s drag and overall performance.”
To tackle this problem, Rabinovitch and his team used their NSF ACCESS allocations on Anvil to create detailed 3D computer models of flow through the actual broadcloth material used in the Mars 2020 mission. They then compared these highly detailed simulations with simplified models to see how much accuracy is lost when using faster, less complex calculations.
The team validated their approach by comparing simulation results to laboratory testing of fabric samples under Earth laboratory conditions. They also ran simulations on Anvil that mimicked the conditions experienced during actual flight tests, including the thin atmosphere encountered during Mars entry.
“Our findings revealed some interesting behavior in how air moves through the fabric in this low-density regime,” Rabinovitch said. “Each small pore in the material can act as a small supersonic jet, and the air actually slips along the surfaces due to the low-density flow regime.”
Across all conditions tested, the researchers found that pressure drag — the force created by air pushing against the fabric – was the primary contributor to the parachute’s total drag force, rather than friction between the air and fabric surface.
However, the study also revealed significant differences between the detailed and simplified models in predicting both drag forces and air flow rates through the material. These discrepancies highlight the need for more research into how these fabric-level details affect the performance of entire parachute systems.
“Our work would not have been possible without running our simulations on Anvil and has implications for future Mars missions and other planetary exploration efforts, where parachute performance can mean the difference between mission success and failure,” Rabinovitch said. “Understanding exactly how these materials behave could lead to better parachute designs and more reliable landing systems for future robotic and potentially crewed missions to Mars and other worlds.”
The study was published in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Journal.
Resource Provider Institution(s): Rosen Center for Advanced Computing (RCAC)
Resources Used: Anvil
Affiliations: Stevens Institute of Technology
Funding Agency: Simulations on Anvil were granted by NSF ACCESS (allocation no. MCH230049) along with computational resources provided by the NASA High-End Computing Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division at Ames Research Center.
Grant or Allocation Number(s): MCH230049
The science story featured here was enabled by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s ACCESS program, which is supported by National Science Foundation grants #2138259, #2138286, #2138307, #2137603, and #2138296.