Observable Signatures of Missile Threats to Army Interests in the Field

The primary objective of this effort is to develop an advanced turbulent combustion model to accurately capture local flame extinction effects that result in afterburning missile plume flame lifting and rapid afterburning shutdown. Such a modeling formulation is critical to enable the Army to effectively fulfill force protection requirements against tactical and theater ballistic missile threats. This new formulation will replace prior phenomenological models for extinction phenomena by directly modeling the physics. The primary approach here will be to employ a comprehensive, compressible flow turbulence – chemistry interaction model to directly capture extinction phenomena that lead to flame lifting. This formulation will be based on a unique combustion model recently developed by CRAFT Tech for compressible reacting flows. This new formulation is an extension of the direct quadrature method of moments (DQMOM) model which resolves key limitations of current DQMOM implementations that limit their range of accuracy and applicability. The new formulation will be evaluated and upgraded, if necessary, for application to extinction phenomena and lifted missile plume flames. This formulation will be implemented within CRAFT Tech’s commercial missile plume simulation software RPFM.