Investigation on the Folding Method and Inflation Process of Ram Air Parachute

As a high-performance paraglider, the ram air parachute has been widely used in various fields such as aerial delivery, space recovery and life-saving. The inflation process is very important to the ram air parachute. A successful parachute inflation basically means that the mission has been almost success. The issues of the folding method, and the numerical modeling and fluid-structure interaction (FSI) during the inflation process of the ram air parachute have been explored in this paper. By using the fluid-solid interaction(FSI) method on ram air parachute, the dynamic change of shape, ess-strain, inflation load and lift/drag coefficient are all worked out. The structure model utilized the membrane finite element structure, while the numerical simulation method employed the Arbitrary Lagrange-Euler (ALE) method. Additionally, we conducted research on numerical modeling for ram air parachute folding, employing the backwards folding technique. This research not only enhances our understanding of the working mechanism of the parachute but also contributes to the advancement of ram air parachute theory. It can serve as a reference for future studies on new methods for the ram air parachute inflation process.