Sensitivity analysis of geometric parameters upon the aerothermodynamic performances of Mars entry vehicle

Aerothermodynamic environment predictions play an important role in the heatshield design of Mars entry vehicle. This article investigates and presents the influences of geometric parameters of the heatshield on its aerothermodynamic performances. The three-dimensional coupled implicit compressible Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations and perfect gas model with the specified effective specific heat ratio have been applied to numerically simulate the flow fields around the vehicle. Menter's shear stress transport (SST) turbulence model with compressible correction is implemented to take account of the turbulent effect. The laminar and turbulent heating rates are demonstrated and analyzed in detail. Furthermore, a non-intrusive polynomial chaos (NIPC) method with Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) is utilized to establish the functional relationship between the aerothermodynamics and geometric parameters. In addition, Sobol indices as global sensitivity metrics have been introduced to investigate the relative contribution of each geometric parameter. The results show that for the maximum heat flux, the value of the cone angle (α_c) with a high index is the top contributor to the both laminar and turbulent flow state, thus the geometric parameter α_c should be considered firstly in the material design process of thermal protection system. Moreover, in the most region of MSL heatshield, cone angle (α_c) also became the major influence factor. However, in a relatively small region, aerothermodynamics exhibits a great sensitivity to the change of nose radius (R_n). In all regions of heatshield, the parameter of shoulder radius (R_s) is always at a low level of Sobol index.