The Team for Advanced Flow Simulation and Modeling (T*AFSM) at Rice University has been developing fluid-structure interaction (FSI) modeling techniques using Stabilized Space-Time FSI (SSTFSI) core technology to model spacecraft parachutes and carry out informative dynamical analysis of parachute performance. Computer modeling of spacecraft parachutes, which are quite often used in clusters of two or three large parachutes, involves FSI between the parachute canopy and the air, geometric complexities created by the construction of the ringsail parachute with hundreds of gaps and slits, and the contact between the parachutes. The computational challenges related to the FSI have successfully been addressed, and one of the special techniques used to deal with the geometric complexities is the Homogenized Modeling of Geometric Porosity. The technique for modeling, in the context of an FSI problem, the contact between two structural surfaces is described and the results of FSI computations using this technique are presented. The results obtained from FSI computations of single parachutes and parachute clusters, the related dynamical analysis, and a special decomposition technique for parachute descent speed are presented. A special technique for extracting model parameters from a parachute FSI computation is also presented.
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