Numerical Crash Simulation of the Reusability Flight Experiment ReFEx

Abstract

The Reusability Flight Experiment (ReFEx) is currently under development at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The project passed the preliminary design review in Mai 2019 and the launch on a Brazilian VSB-30 sounding rocket is scheduled in 2022. The main goals of the project are the demonstration of a controlled autono-mous re-entry flight from hypersonic velocity down to subsonic range and the testing of the key technologies re-quired for future reusable winged first stage systems. Furthermore, the acquisition of the in-flight generated data is crucial for the Post Flight Analysis (PFA) as well as for the development of future reusable launch systems. As for the experimental vehicle no landing gear and no parachute has been foreseen, it will perform a hard touch down at the end of the mission. This issue needs to be considered in the vehicle design, since the memory units inside the vehicle needs to be recovered after the crash for the PFA. Therefore, an intensive investigation of possible crash scenarios has been performed to obtain preliminary assessment of the effect on the systems. This paper provides a mission and system overview. Furthermore, the preliminary analysis results as well as the corresponding assump-tions regarding the crash analysis are outlined and discussed.