Inflatable aerodynamic decelerators are being developed as a new technology for atmospheric reentry. Flexible aeroshells have been observed to deform under aerodynamic loads, and to investigate their behavior, fluid-structure interaction (FSI) analysis that considers the coupling between high enthalpy flow and structural flexibility is appropriate. This study investigated the FSI behavior of a flexible aeroshell in the supersonic regime, where compression effects are prominent, with the objective of elucidating the influence of structural deformation on the resulting aerodynamic forces. Numerical simulations were conducted with and without structural deformation under two angle-of-attack (AOA) conditions. The results showed that at non-zero AOA, asymmetric deformation of the structure, caused noticeable changes in the flow and aerodynamic forces. In contrast, at zero AOA, the influence of structural flexibility was relatively small. These findings indicate that FSI analysis is especially important for accurately evaluating flexible aeroshells in supersonic flows under inclined flight conditions.
HATA et al. (Wed,) studied this question.