Coupled simulation for reentry ablative behavior of hypersonic vehicles

Abstract

Numerical analyses of hypersonic vehicles ablative behaviors focus on the accurate models of the thermochemical reaction flow field. The assumptions of chemical equilibrium and non-catalytic wall cannot meet the ablative behavior prediction requirements for high Mach number flights with multiphase materials. In this paper, the numerical analysis of hypersonic vehicle reentry involves the nonequilibrium thermochemical flow field and thermodynamic structure with moving boundary. Two surface models, finite rate catalysis model and Park finite rate surface interaction model were applied into the flow field simulation. And the reentry ablative behaviors of two hypersonic vehicles were simulated by the partitioning methods using the computational fluid dynamics code Fluent and the material thermal and structural response code Abaqus with user defined codes. And the two codes were loosely coupled in time to exchange the data. The structural temperature, surface shape change at the wall under different reentry altitudes and various angles of attack were obtained. The validity and reliability of frame work set up were validated with previous work.