Development of an Interactive Hypersonic Flow Solver Framework for Aerothermodynamic Analysis

Abstract

Sparta is a three-dimensional finite volume compressible Java based flow solver on multiple block structured grids. The flow solver is graphical user interface driven and platform independent as well. Finite-rate reaction kinetics, thermal and chemical non-equilibrium and high temperature transport coefficients are all developed and incorporated into the solver. Zero, one and two equation turbulence models have been implemented in the solver for turbulence modeling. The flow domain is discretized by a structured grid and a finite-volume approach is used to discretize the conservation equations. One of several schemes can be chosen from the user interface to calculate inviscid fluxes across cell faces while central differences schemes are used to calculate the viscous fluxes. The CFD solver includes a geometry engine to generate surface and volume grids, a trajectory engine to generate trajectory data given the appropriate atmospheric models, an aerodynamic flow solver to calculate the aerodynamic forces and moments and finally hooked to the Navier-Stokes engine. Probe models can also be selected automatically from the graphical user interface and the database. The database comprises vehicle dimensions, trajectory data, and aero-thermal, Thermal Protection Systems data for many different ballistic entry vehicles. Material properties for carbon and silicon based ablators have been obtained and can be accessed from the database. Comparative data analysis capability is achieved through a Relational Database Management System. Atmospheric models can be selected from the graphical user interface so that the multi-species to be solved are automatically populated before the solver is invoked. Sparta has been integrated to a planetary probe database and a trajectory code to study trajectory analysis, aerodynamic heating and flow-field analysis. The purpose of this research is twofold: to investigate a pure Java based multi-threaded CFD solver and to implement a semi-automatic and interactive solver for aerothermodynamics such that grids can be generated automatically given the geometry of the vehicles, trajectory data can be generated given the atmospheric model and TPS material from the graphical interface for the generation of flow field information for atmospheric entry vehicles. Sparta accepts hooks from the trajectory so that inputs for the flow solver can come from the trajectory output making the solver trajectory driven. This paper addresses the CFD development, implementation and capabilities of a hypersonic flow solver Sparta.

High‐Fidelity Aerothermal Engineering Analysis for Planetary Probes Using DOTNET Framework and OLAP Cubes Database

“…Stored constants for ablative materials include the decomposition kinetic constants used in the Arrhenius formulation for density decomposition, the resin volume fraction, the heats of formation, thermal conductivity, specific heat, emissivity, and heat of ablation curve fit constants. There are two components to the approximate technique presented here [25]. The first component makes use of a steady-state ablation assumption and employs the heat of ablation, or Q * , to estimate recession during entry.…”