Coupling of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Reentry Vehicle Surface Ablations, and In-Depth Conductions

The proposed innovation consists of developing a stand-alone computational tool to predict simultaneously the hypersonic flowfield and the thermal response of the heatshield of vehicles entering the atmosphere at high speed, including the full coupling of the fluid an solid phenomena involved. In the past, the fluid and solid media have been analyzed separately, and their interaction has been coupled loosely. New vehicles and missions contemplated by DOD and NASA tax the capabilities of current technology, and make it desirable to integrate the various analyses into an advanced tool to address the design of thermal protection systems in a unified way. HYPERSONICS has been pursuing this goal since the mid-nineties, and has developed software components that it proposes to improve and combine to achieve the objectives stated in the present solicitation. The resulting stand-alone computer code will be capable of predicting the temperature fields in the fluid and solid media, the heat exchange occurring between them, the loss of mass and change of shape of the heat shield, and the forces acting on the vehicle along its atmospheric trajectory, all in a single computer run.