Multidisciplinary Optimization and Experimental Aerodynamic Assessment of a Crew Return Vehicle

The aim of the present paper is to study the preliminary aeroshape design and low-speed aerodynamic analysis of a crew reentry vehicle for low-earth orbit servicing. An in house, well-established multi-disciplinary design optimization procedure has been employed to assess several aeroshape candidates. Once the main goals and requirements for the mission are provided, the optimization procedure can identify the optimal configuration of the Crew Return Vehicle, plus some alternate plausible variants. In order to efficiently manage parametric design components, a proprietary Skeleton-based Integral Soft Object methodology has been integrated and employed in the optimization framework. The final candidates are mainly differentiated by a specific design for the configuration of the winglets and vertical tails (single vertical tail vs. V-tail). Subsequently, a wind tunnel test campaign has been carried out in the 4x3 ft low-speed wind tunnel at the School of Aeronautical Engineering of the University of Sydney to validate low-speed aerodynamic behavior related to landing conditions. In this work, longitudinal and lateral-longitudinal aerodynamic performance of the NM3 candidate configuration is analyzed and discussed.