A thermal model is developed for the response of carbon-epoxy composite laminates in fire environments. The model is based on a porous media description that includes the effects of gas transport within the laminate along with swelling. Model comparisons are conducted against the data from Quintiere et al. [34]. Verifications are conducted for both coupon level and intermediate scale one-sided heating tests. Comparisons of the heat release rate (HRR) and time-to-ignition as well as the final products (mass fractions, volume percentages, porosity, etc.) are conducted. Overall, the agreement between available the data and model is good considering the simplified approximations to account for flame heat flux. A sensitivity study using a newly developed swelling model shows the importance of accounting for laminate expansion for the prediction of burnout. Reasonable agreement is observed between the model and data of the final product composition that includes porosity, mass fractions and volume expansion ratio.

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Summary This study concerns the development of a numerical methodology for initializing immersed interface‐based CFD solvers for using complex computer‐aided design (CAD) geometry. CFD solvers with higher‐order discretization stencils require larger stencil widths, which become problematic in regions of space where insufficient mesh resolution is available. This problem becomes especially challenging when convoluted triangulated surface meshes generated from complex solid models are used to initialize the cut‐cells. A pragmatic balance between desired local geometry resolution and numerical accuracy is often required to find a practical solution. Here, a robust iterative fill algorithm is presented that balances geometry resolution with numerical accuracy (via stencil size). Several examples are presented to illustrate the use of this initialization procedure that employs both the original CAD generated triangulated surface mesh, along with a level set representation of the surface to initialize cut‐cells and boundary proximity measures for creation of CFD stencils. Convergence error analysis of surface area and enclosed volumes is first presented to show the effects of fill on the geometry as a function of desired stencil size and grid resolution. The algorithm is then applied to geometrically complex problems using large eddy simulation. Two problems are considered. The first is flow around the Eiffel Tower. The second is a combustion swirler in the context of a design problem. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this paper, a Volume of Fluid method which uses a Stratified Flow model for flux calculation is proposed to solve a compressible multiphase flow in a way that has high parallel efficiency. The solver is part of an open‐source computing tool to study fuel entrainment and combustion in the application of paraffin‐based hybrid rocket motors. This paper focuses on the compressible Volume of Fluid solver for the liquid and gaseous phases in this environment. This solver uses perfect gas and stiffened gas models for equation of state, with the ability to easily add other models as desired. Additionally a comparison of a Riemann solver versus an AUSM+up scheme is conducted, showing improvement with the later in the solution of multiphase flows. This solver successfully reproduces shock tube cases with the expected accuracy, as well as simulating two‐dimensional shear and gravity‐driven flows. Results also show that the code is able to utilize a Stratified Flow model to evaluate shear flow without the need for interface reconstruction or gradient calculations. Finally, it is shown that the solver has near‐ideal scaling under strong scaling tests as well as good performance in static scaling, giving improved performance over current options and implying future advancement of high‐performance computing efficiency for multiphase flow solvers.