With the rapid development of the aerospace field, traditional energy absorption materials are becoming more and more inadequate and cannot meet the requirements of having a light weight, high energy absorption efficiency, and high energy absorption density. Since existing studies have shown that carbon nanotube (CNT) buckypaper is a promising candidate for energy absorption, owing to its extremely high energy absorption efficiency and remarkable mass density of energy absorption, this study explores the application of buckypaper as the landing buffer material in a manned lunar lander. Firstly, coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations were implemented to investigate the compression stress-strain relationships of buckypapers with different densities and the effect of the compression rate within the range of the landing velocity. Then, based on a self-designed manned lunar lander, buckypapers of appropriate densities were selected to be the energy absorption materials within the landing mechanisms of the lander. For comparison, suitable aluminum honeycomb materials, the most common energy absorption materials in lunar landers, were determined for the same landing mechanisms. Afterwards, the two soft-landing multibody dynamic models are established, respectively, and their soft-landing performances under three severe landing cases are analyzed, respectively. The results depicted that the landers, respectively, adopting the two energy absorption materials well, satisfy the soft-landing performance requirements in all the cases. It is worth mentioning that the lander employing the buckypaper is proved to demonstrate a better soft-landing performance, mainly reflected in reducing the mass of the energy absorption element by 8.14 kg and lowing the maximum center-of-mass overload of the lander by 0.54 g.

Reusable launch vehicles (RLVs) are a solution for effective and economic transportation in future aerospace exploration. However, RLVs are limited to being used under simple landing conditions (small landing velocity and angle) due to their poor adaptability and the high rocket acceleration of current landing systems. In this paper, an adaptive RLV landing system with semi-active control is proposed. The proposed landing system can adjust the damping forces of primary strut dampers through semi-actively controlled currents in accordance with practical landing conditions. A landing dynamic model of the proposed landing system is built. According to the dynamic model, an light and effective RLV landing system is parametrically designed based on the response surface methodology. Dynamic simulations validate the proposed landing system under landing conditions including the highest rocket acceleration and the greatest damper compressions. The simulation results show that the proposed landing system with semi-active control has better landing performance than current landing systems that use passive liquid or liquid–honeycomb dampers. Additionally, the flexibility and friction of the structure are discussed in the simulations. Compared to rigid models, flexible models decrease rocket acceleration by 51% and 54% at the touch down moments under these two landing conditions, respectively. The friction increases rocket acceleration by less than 1%. However, both flexibility and friction have little influence on the distance between the rocket and ground, or the compression strokes of the dampers.

Owing to its advantages of high strength and low density, composite explosion containment vessel (CECV) can limit the scope of internal explosion shock wave, thereby reducing the damage to the surrounding environment and protecting human life and property. However, due to the complexity of the explosion process and related structure, the mechanism by which shock wave is induced on the inner lining of the explosion containment vessel (ECV) and the influence of the structural parameters of ECV on the reflection overpressure of the inner wall are not understood clearly. In this study, the characteristic of the internal explosion pressure load of a single-layer ECV is examined through experimental tests and simulations, and a three-dimensional mesoscopic model is established and verified. Furthermore, to solve the problem of the restricted explosion resistance of the single-layer ECV, a new steel plate-aluminum honeycomb-fiber cloth sandwich structure with sliding lining is proposed to design a multi-layer CECV. For the arrangement of fiber filaments, uniform distribution, random distribution, and honeycomb distribution algorithms are established based on Python language. Finally, a finite element model of the CECV is established, and a series of explosion simulations are conducted. The results indicate that the laying angle of the fibre cloth has no effect on the peak overpressure inside the ECV, and the ECV exhibits the best protective property when the laying angle of the fibre cloth is 0°/ 45°/ 90°/ 45°/ 0°. It is also observed that the steel plate-aluminium honeycomb-fibre cloth sandwich structure prolongs the action time of the explosion shock wave and greatly reduces the peak pressure in the CECV. Remarkably, for the weakest position of the tank, the strain for the multi-layer CECV under 3000 g TNT is even less than that for the single-layer ECV under 150 g TNT.

The rapid, efficient, and rational design of airfoils is crucial for enhancing the flight efficiency of aircraft. At present, traditional two-dimensional airfoil design methods are mostly based on the indirect transformation of the features of existing airfoil libraries, which makes it challenging to develop new airfoil characteristics to meet the increasingly stringent flight index requirements. Therefore, a direct airfoil design path with less time consumption and high efficiency and a new method integrating direct airfoil generation with predicting aerodynamic performance parameters were put forward. First, an in-depth theoretical analysis of the turbulent characteristics of airfoils was conducted, which can more accurately predict performance parameters, such as the lift-drag ratio, lift coefficient, and drag coefficient of airfoils. Second, an airfoil generation strategy based on the “direct ellipse method” was proposed. Taking the ellipse as the geometric carrier, the upper curve of the airfoil is rapidly generated by combining the random three-point descent curve and the parameter calculation theory, and the overall design of the airfoil is efficiently accomplished through coordinate transformation. Finally, based on the airfoil coordinate points and a large amount of lift–drag ratio data calculated by Python programs and computational fluid dynamics programs, an airfoil lift–drag ratio prediction model based on deep learning multilayer perceptron theory was constructed. Compared with the traditional finite element calculation method, this model significantly accelerates the calculation speed of the lift–drag ratio, and the error rate is only 2.783%. Combining the new airfoil generation method and the lift–drag ratio prediction model can complete the overall airfoil design in a diverse, rapid, and accurate way, providing a reliable approach and valuable reference for efficient and rapid airfoil design.