Aerodynamic Framework for Parachute Deployment from Aerial Vehicle

About this technology

Overview

Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft, conceptualized to be used as air taxis for transporting cargo or passengers, are not traditionally designed to glide to a safe landing following propulsion failure. As these aircraft may operate either in populated areas or with passengers onboard, safety measures such as parachutes must be designed and tested for safe landing during air taxi failure. In-silico design processes that employ validated computer simulations are useful for early design and testing prior to physical prototyping. However, current computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers can be computationally expensive and time-consuming. NASA Ames has developed a CFD based rapid simulation framework for parachute deployment from air taxis in a simulated flight by generating a database of simulated accurate aerodynamic data to be used in place of on-the-fly flow simulations, thus enabling rapid simulation and design processes.