Thermal Protection System Modeling and Simulation Software for Hardware in the Loop

Hypersonic technologies have rapidly evolved in recent years, with maneuverable hypersonic glide vehicles and cruise missiles posing a more serious threat that is more difficult to counter than conventional ballistic missiles. To remain competitive, existing systems need to be further matured and adapted towards greater maneuverability, accelerations, and speeds. A well-characterized thermal protection system (TPS) is required to ensure the vehicle can sustain prolonged flights in these hypersonic environments and to protect the underlying system hardware such as the structural components, sensor/seeker systems, navigation guidance and controls (NG&C) hardware, payload, and other electrical and hardware components from the extreme external flow environment. The Navy has identified the need to expand its ability to do real-time system level test and evaluation of hypersonic weapons. The Navy requires a fast-running, high-fidelity software model to interface with the system-level test architecture for modeling the TPS response to the advanced hypersonic aerodynamic environment for Hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL) system testing. Recognizing this critical need, CFD Research proposes to provide an enhanced TPS M&S framework, the Hypersonic Environment Analysis Toolkit (HEAT), to demonstrate the desired capability for the Navy . CFD Research will partner with Kratos SRE to develop and execute a experimental testing for model validation. The Phase I effort focused on verification / validation of the HEAT analysis for relevant materials and adaptation of the existing application programming interface by a relevant software platform or language to the Navy system level test architecture. KSRE provided a Phase II test plan. In the Phase I Option, KSRE will conduct initial material tests and provide data to CFD Research to validate the testing and modeling approaches. Further, CFD Research also began development of a boundary layer heat transfer surrogate modeling that further augmentated HEAT’s execution times. In Phase II, the team will execute the proof-of-concept methodology developed in the Phase I on Navy-provided materials, geometries, and trajectories.