On the Stability of Pitching Motion of Reentry Vehicle with the Tilted Toroidal Ballute

Introduction

An aerodynamic ballute system is an inflatable large aerodynamic decelerating device that can enhance the drag force of the reentry vehicle system drastically. The enhanced drag force and large frontal area of the ballute can reduce the ballistic coefficient of the reentry vehicle system, which can mitigate the reentry heating drastically. Among various kinds of ballute configurations[1], we focused on the trailing toroidal ballute configuration as shown in Fig.1. Figure 1 shows the schematic view of the reentry vehicle system with the trailing toroidal ballute. In this configuration, the toroidal ballute is attached to the reentry capsule by several cables. For the above configuration, the aerodynamics and aerothermodynamics are investigated numerically and experimentally[2, 3]. Their results showed that the trailing toroidal ballute will be a candidate for the future reentry vehicle system among the various ballute configurations.