Fluid/thermal/chemical non-equilibrium simulation of hypersonic reentry vehicles

• Main Authors: S Sockalingam, A Tabiei
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Multi-Science Publishing 2016-04-01
• Series: International Journal of Multiphysics
• Online Access: http://journal.multiphysics.org/index.php/IJM/article/view/104

A multi-physics frame work has been setup for the simulation of surfaceheat flux for nonablating hypersonic reentry vehicles and presented in thispaper. The main goal of this work was to set up a simple approach for theheat flux prediction during the reentry of the vehicle. The vehicleconsidered in the calculation is an axisymmetric vehicle flying at zerodegree angle of attack. Chemical nonequilibrium in the flowfield is simulatedby implementing a set of finite rate equations in the laminar finite rate modelin FLUENT. The frame work set up was validated with the results availablein the literature. Good correlation was observed between the results fromthe commercial code with the implemented equations and the results fromthe literature.