Plume aerodynamic effects of cushion engine in lunar landing

During the second period of China “Tanyue” Project, the explorer will softland on the moon. The cushion engines are used to decelerate the explorer and reduce the impact on the lunar ground. It is necessary to study its plume effects on the explorer component. The self-developed PWS (Plume WorkStation) software based on direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method is used to simulate the plume effects of two 150 N engines. Due to the complex structure of the explorer, PWS uses a decoupling method to treat the boundary mesh, which mainly interacts with simulation particles, and has no relation with the computational grids. After the analytical expressions of plane surfaces and curved surfaces of each boundary block are given, the particle position within or without the boundary blocks can be easily determined. Finally the 3D plume field of two 150 N engines is simulated. The pressure, temperature and velocity distributions of plume field are clearly presented by three characteristic slices. The aerodynamic effects on the explorer bottom, the landfall legs and antenna are separately shown. The compression influence on the plume flow of four landfall legs can be observed.