High-Fidelity Multiphase-Peridynamics Solver for Hypersonic Vehicle Analysis in Adverse Weather Conditions for GPUs

Adverse weather conditions pose a significant threat to the structural integrity and aerodynamic performance of hypersonic vehicles. One critical yet underexplored area is the impact of rain and particulate clouds during high-speed flight. Droplet aero-breakup, impingement, and the resulting fluid-structure interactions can lead to surface damage, erosion, or changes in aerodynamic characteristics, all of which are difficult to predict using current methods. These interactions involve complex multiphase physics, including interfacial instabilities, cavitation, phase change, and dispersed phase dynamics, compounded by a lack of reliable experimental or flight data for validation. Reproducing these effects in ground tests is difficult, and in-flight measurements carry significant uncertainty. As a result, accurate numerical tools are increasingly critical for predicting how hypersonic vehicles respond to weather-related hazards.However, the computational cost of existing multiphase simulation tools has prevented full-scale simulations of realistic hypersonic vehicles encountering droplet clouds. No current framework has demonstrated the ability to simulate such complex coupled phenomena at the scale required for vehicle design and damage prediction. To overcome this limitation, Whoosh proposes a GPU-accelerated, fully coupled multiphase and peridynamics solver capable of simulating droplet aero-breakup, cloud impingement, and structural response under hypersonic conditions. The solver, CHAMPS+, employs a block-structured Cartesian framework with adaptive mesh refinement to dynamically track droplets and shock features, allowing simulations with hundreds to thousands of droplets and total cell counts on the order of tens to hundreds of billionsófar beyond existing capabilities.The final framework will incorporate a comprehensive set of physical models including finite-rate phase change, cavitation, surface tension, and advanced material equations of state suitable for high-speed flows. Structural damage will be predicted using Whooshís in-house peridynamics solver, which tightly couples material failure mechanics with fluid interaction to simulate fragmentation and ejecta. The end goal is to provide the Department of the Navy with a tool that not only captures multiphase dynamics but also predicts material damage under realistic operational scenarios. This effort builds on Whooshís extensive expertise in multiphase flows and impact modeling, setting a foundation for future innovations in hypersonic vehicle survivability.