High-Fidelity Isogeometric Aerothermoelastic Analyses of Hypersonic Behavior

Endo-atmospheric flight at hypersonic speeds creates an extraordinarily harsh aerothermal environment where the vehicle is subjected to extremes of temperature, aerodynamic stresses, chemically reacting flows, and plasma. Existing software only partly addresses aspects of this behavior. Additionally, existing codes may be considered legacy in terms of the software development framework used as well as their computational scalability for modern platforms. Accurately predicting hypersonic flow effects is vital to the successful development of next-generation ballistics, reentry vehicles, and unmanned platforms and in understanding and mitigating the effects of air-blasts on structural behavior. On-going programs require this capability to be successful. More importantly, those vehicles and weapon systems that are still in early/mid development stages can be transformationally impacted by the software proposed here.IERUS Technologies, Inc., in partnership with Brigham Young University, proposes to augment our high-fidelity multiphysics software VMP with computationally efficient isogeometric mid-processing tools to improve the ability of the Army to model the coupled thermal-fluid-structural behavior characteristic of hypersonic flow of vehicles and projectiles. VMP currently provides users with high-order accuracy combined with the speed and scalability afforded by high performance computing (HPC) and multi-GPU acceleration. During Phase I, our team will augment VMP for demonstration of critical fluid-structural interactions relevant to hypersonic flow and demonstrate this capability on representative geometries.