Drag-shield drop tower residual acceleration optimisation

Abstract

Among the forces that appear in drop towers for microgravity experiments, aerodynamic drag plays a crucial role in the residual acceleration. Buoyancy can also be critical, especially at the first instances of the drop when the low speed of the experimental platform makes the aerodynamic drag small compared with buoyancy. In this paper the perturbation method is used to formulate an analytical model which has been validated experimentally. The experimental test was conduced by undergraduate students of aerospace engineering at the Institute of Microgravity 'Ignacio Da Riva' of the Technical University of Madrid (IDR/UPM) microgravity tower. The test helped students to understand the influence of the buoyancy on the residual acceleration of the experiment platform. The objective of the students was to understand the physical process during the drop, identify the main parameters involved in the residual acceleration and determine the most suitable configuration for the next drop tower proposed to be built at UPM.