Hypersonic Vehicle Environment Simulation. Phase 1
Abstract
The hypersonic, viscous, chemically reacting flow around a vehicle in the upper layers of the atmosphere influences vehicle performance, thermal environment, and sensor visibility. Under the Phase I effort; a unique hybrid Navier-Stokes/Monte Carlo method has been successfully developed for the simulation of said hypersonic flows. This method combines a continuum description of the gas mixture with a statistical (or particle ) description of the species transport and the chemical reactions, thereby allowing easy use of available chemical kinetics data. As such, the hybrid approach is capable of exploiting both the efficiency of a continuum approach for the fluid dynamic calculations and the benefits in physical modeling of the Monte Carlo approach for chemical reactions. The viability of this hybrid approach for practical hypersonic flow calculations has been demonstrated in the Phase I effort via the calculation of the chemically reacting flow field over an axisymmetric cone. A proposed Phase II effort would continue the development of this method by improving the numerical efficiency of the particle transport scheme, and by incorporating physical models for catalytic walls, recombination reactions, and ionization. In addition, radiation would be included via a radiation transport model. For the class of problems of interest here, the resulting procedure will be able to represent the complex chemical and thermal processes occurring around a hypersonic vehicle in much more detail than is currently possible with either the continuum or the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) approach.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 1989
- Accession Number
- ADA209030
Entities
People
- F. J. De Jong
- H. Mcdonald
- J. S. Sabnis