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MEMS Seminar: Charbel Farhat, "Innovative Computational Methods for Predicting Supersonic Parachute Inflation Dynamics in Mars Landings"

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Wednesday, April 23, 2025
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Charbel Farhat
MEMS Seminar Speaker Series - Spring 2025

Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, Spring 2025 Seminar Series, welcomes Charbel Farhat, Professor at Stanford University, to present the lecture, "Innovative Computational Methods for Predicting Supersonic Parachute Inflation Dynamics in Mars Landings."
ABSTRACT: Current Mars landing technology utilizes low-density supersonic decelerators, such as lightweight, high-efficiency parachutes. Future missions with larger and heavier rovers will require bigger parachutes and inflatable drag devices, necessitating advanced simulations using high-fidelity, multi-disciplinary computational models for supersonic parachute inflation dynamics (SPID). These models must address complex factors, including shocks, turbulence, porous flow boundary conditions, the behavior of fabric materials, extensive contact between thin surfaces, and highly nonlinear fluid-structure interactions amid topology changes.
This lecture presents research conducted at Stanford University in collaboration with NASA Ames and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop these computational models and highlights several associated innovations. Key advancements include a multi-scale approach for modeling woven fabric dynamics through locally attached microstructures and mechanics-informed machine learning, a total variation diminishing method for solving multi-material flow problems while eliminating spurious oscillations, a subgrid scale modeling technique for porous wall boundary conditions, and an energy-conserving discretization method for fluid-structure transmission interfaces of disparate spatial dimensions.
Additionally, the lecture will report validation results from simulating the SPID of parachutes tested during NASA's 2018 ASPIRE mission, which informed the parachute design selection for the Mars 2020 mission that successfully landed Perseverance on February 18, 2021.

CHARBEL FARHAT is the Vivian Church Hoff Professor of Aircraft Structures at Stanford University's School of Engineering, where he chaired the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics from 2008 to 2023. His service includes participation in the Space Technology Industry-Government-University Roundtable (2017-23), U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (2015-19), Dept. of Commerce's Emerging Technology and Research Advisory Committee (2008-18), and Director of the Stanford-King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology Center of Excellence for Aeronautics and Astronautics (2014-24).

Contact: Amy Spaulding