随着载人航天事业和行星探索任务的不断发展,再入返回运载工具受到运载火箭整流罩的大小限制越来越明显。针对降低返回系统重量以增加有效载荷的日益需求,一种新型充气式再入减速器成为国际上研究的热点。它具有易折叠包装、重量轻、展开阻力面积大,再入时弹道系数低和产生的气动热量小等明显优点,为航天员应急返回、深空探测以及有效载荷的回收提供了一种新的技术途径。重点对堆叠圆环型、单充气环薄膜型和双层锥形充气囊型等三种充气式再入减速器在结构设计、飞行测试、材料防热研究、气动特性仿真分析等方面的最近研究进展进行总述,并对充气式再入减速器的关键科学问题进行简要总结。
With continuous development of the manned space flight and planetary exploration missions, re-entry vehicles become more and more obvious for size limit of the launch vehicle fairing. For the increasing demand of increased payload the return system is needed to reduce its weight, a new inflatable re-entry aeroshell becomes one of hot spots of international research. It has the obvious advantages of easy package, light weight, large drag area, low ballistic coefficient, and small heat generated by hypersonic air. This vehicle can provide a new way for the emergency return of astronauts, deep space instrumentation and payload recovery. This paper focuses on three kinds of inflatable re-entry areoshells, stack ring type, single-ring and double-layer thin film inflatable cone type. The recent advance in structural design, re-entry flight test, heat-resistant properties of materials, and other aspects about simulation analysis of aerodynamic characteristics is overviewed, and some important problems of inflatable re-entry aeroshells are summarized.