Coupled Pyrolysis, Radiant Heat Transfer, and Fluid Dynamics Modeling

The primary goal of this SBIR Phase II proposal is to provide the Army with a dramatically enhanced ability to accurately predict IR emissions and radiant heat transfer for missile plume and missile base heating applications. Radiant heat transfer to the missile base environment from afterburning plume flow will have a large impact on the design of thermal shielding to ensure survivability over the lifetime of the mission. Missile plume IR emission predictions are also relevant to the Armys mission to support MDA applications. To support these different requirements necessitates an accurate representation of infra-red (IR) emissions for these applications. A recent missile plume study identified a fundamental limitation of current plume IR prediction methodologies, namely that current state-of-the-art missile plume IR prediction methodologies neglect the influence of unsteady turbulent flowfield fluctuations on IR predictions. Neglecting these turbulenceradiation interactions (TRI) can result in more than a factor of 2 under-prediction of IR emission. Such a dramatic under-prediction of IR emissions in base radiant heat transfer applications could cause a dramatic deterioration of heat shield safety margins.