Reliable Aerothermodynamic Predictions for Hypersonic Flight for High Speed ISR

The proposed project will develop advanced modeling capabilities for hypersonic flow problems, specifically for predicting aerothermodynamic flow field for estimation of drag, thermal and structural loads, and for surface interactions. A quantum-to-continuum suite of tools that develop molecular relaxation models based on computational chemistry and quasi-classical trajectory (QCT) analysis will be developed. A novel automatic potential energy surface construction approach will be used to construct ab-initio set of calculations on-the-fly will be implemented. A massively-parallel QCT technique will be used to obtain state-specific reaction rates with estimated uncertainties, and can be further reduced to obtain lower-order models. An application programming interface (API) will enable coupling to external CFD codes. As part of a hierarchy of demonstration cases, direct numerical simulation (DNS) and Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) computations will be conducted.