Impact response and water entry posture of a Space Capsule's water recovery

At the beginning of its water entry, a space capsule suffers a big impact load, it has an important effect on the safety of the capsule structure and people inside. Base on NASA's experimental model, The process of the capsule water entry was simulated with the fluid-structure interaction algorithm in the software LS-DYNA. The dynamic responses of the capsule were discussed in the vertical and horizontal directions, respectively. The simulated maximum accelerations agreed well with NASA's experimental data. Then, the responses of the capsule were analyzed with different water entry angles, masses and water entry postures. It was shown that the bigger the water entry angle and the mass, the smaller the acceleration of the capsule; for different water entry postures, the maximum acceleration of the capsule with positive incline water entry is smaller than that with negative incline water entry; the maximum acceleration of the capsule in the situation of mass center below is bigger than that in the situation of mass center above; after water entry, the capsule posture is more stable in the situation of negative incline water entry and mass center below.