Speaker
Description
This project addresses aerothermodynamics tools for Design for Demise (D4D) and aims to create a step-change in safer spacecraft development by improving the speed, accuracy, and usability of aerothermal D4D tools. Any new tool developed must not only be sufficiently accurate and generate results at an appropriate rate and cost, but most also be intuitive to use.
The current project, undertaken by a consortium comprising of Frazer-Nash Consultancy, Fluid Gravity Engineering, and Belstead Research, aims to de-risk the development of a new propagator.
This will be done by:
- Establishing the user requirements of such a tool. This is an essential step to ensure that any new tool developed provides maximal value to industrial stakeholders and can provide the required confidence in the results to the regulators.
- Targeting the development of new methods of addressing uncertainty in the existing models. This will be done to demonstrate that any new propagator developed should improve the accuracy of the results, this step aims to de-risk this part of the full activity. This step will investigate the options available to improve the modelling of the physics.
Finally, a specific de-risk activity, demonstrating a new, user-friendly graphical user interface will be generated to allow stakeholders to interact with a ‘mock-up’ of the future propagator tool in order to obtain rapid and valuable feedback to feed into any future full activity, in a truly agile approach.
The consortium chaired a user-requirements workshop with industry stakeholders, regulators, and ESA on 8 November 2021 to elicit the requirements of a new high-speed, high-accuracy, multi-physics propagator. Initial high-level findings from this meeting will be presented at ATD3 along with a brief summary of the current landscape of D4D tools. Frazer-Nash, Fluid Gravity, and Belstead Research, as well as ESA, would greatly welcome any further contribution from industry, regulators, researchers, or other interested parties, on their thoughts on the requirements of future D4D tools.
