A study of viscoelastic behavior of a textile suspension in a parachute system model for advanced space re-entry vehicles

One of the pressing problems in space industry is providing soft landing on Earth for space re-entry vehicles and stages of launch vehicles for their re-use. This problem could be addressed by using a parachute system option which has an elastic link and tandem separation of the cargo into two tethered parts. The paper discusses determining viscoelastic behavior of the textile tether in a test setup of this parachute system, and constructing a math model of its strain behavior under transient mechanical loads. Obtained in the experiment was viscous friction coefficient for unit length of the tether, while the literature provides damping properties for samples of a certain length. The math model was developed under assumption of the Kelvin-Voigt viscoelastic model. Wave effects produced by shock impact are not simulated. The process of cargo descent was mathematically simulated using parameters of the test-bed experiment. The results of calculations using experimentally obtained coefficients are in satisfactory agreement with experiment with respect to strain and maximum g-load values.