Scaling of Erosion Rate in Subsonic Jet Experiments and Apollo Lunar Module Landings

TL;DR

This study investigates how erosion rates caused by subsonic jets vary with physical parameters through experiments and develops a model applicable to planetary surfaces, validated by Apollo lunar landing videos and CFD simulations.

Contribution

It provides new experimental data and a generalized erosion rate model for subsonic jet erosion applicable to lunar and planetary landings.

Findings

Erosion rate scales with gravity, grain size, and gas velocity.

Experimental results match CFD simulations and Apollo landing observations.

The model predicts erosion damage during spacecraft landings.

Abstract

Small scale jet-induced erosion experiments are useful for identifying the scaling of erosion with respect to the various physical parameters (gravity, grain size, gas velocity, gas density, grain density, etc.), and because they provide a data set for benchmarking numerical flow codes. We have performed experiments varying the physical parameters listed above (e.g., gravity was varied in reduced gravity aircraft flights). In all these experiments, a subsonic jet of gas impinges vertically on a bed of sand or lunar soil simulant forming a localized scour hole beneath the jet. Videography captures the erosion and scour hole formation processes, and analysis of these videos post-test identifies the scaling of these processes. This has produced important new insights into the physics of erosion. Based on these insights, we have developed an erosion rate model that can be applied to generalized situations, such as the erosion of soil beneath a horizontal gas flow on a planetary surface. This is important to lunar exploration because the rate of erosion beneath the rocket exhaust plume of a landing spacecraft will determine the amount of sand-blasting damage that can be inflicted upon surrounding hardware. Although the rocket exhaust plume at the exit of the nozzle is supersonic, the boundary layer on the lunar surface where erosion occurs is subsonic. The model has been benchmarked through comparison with the Apollo landing videos, which show the blowing lunar soil, and computational fluid dynamics simulations of those landings.