Water entry of a rocket fairing half
Simulation of the hydrodynamic impact of a rocket fairing half during splashdown.
- Industry
- Aerospace
- Physics
- Multiphase flow - Fluid/structure interactions
- Platform
- HPC Cluster
Water entry of a rocket fairing half
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Objective
During space launches, some rocket parts, such as the fairing half-shell, are jettisoned in flight and then recovered after falling into the ocean. Understanding their behavior during water impact is crucial to:
- avoid structural damage
- optimize recovery systems
- ensure equipment reusability
Simulation setup
The simulation reproduces the descent of a rocket fairing half based on an imported 3D geometry (STL format), integrated directly into the computational environment.
The domain is modeled as a two-phase air/water configuration, with an upper region filled with air and a lower region occupied by water. The interface between the two phases is tracked dynamically using a VOF (Volume of Fluid) method, allowing the capture of free-surface deformations during impact.
The fairing half is initially positioned in the air region with an inclined orientation, then released under gravity in order to simulate a realistic descent until impact with the water. The computation is performed on a structured Cartesian mesh, ensuring fast simulation setup without requiring complex mesh generation around the geometry. The interaction between the fluid and the structure is taken into account through a penalization approach, allowing complex geometries to be efficiently embedded in the grid.
Results
The simulation captures a range of physical phenomena:
- fall through the air
- impact with the free surface
- water entry and post-impact dynamics