SBIR-STTR Award

The proposed work will incorporate the newly released software into the signature analysis workflow. Extensions of the US3D flow solver will include improvements to the decoupled implicit solver to robustly and efficiently handle reacting flow. Trajectory specification, conjugate vehicle heating, and ablation with surface recession will be enabled through use of a Trajectory Ablation & Shape Change (TASC) solver. Finally, laminar-to-turbulent boundary layer transition prediction tools will be used to improve the accuracy of US3D simulations. The proposed enhancements will directly benefit aerospace vehicle signature prediction phenomenology by improving the accuracy and robustness of the underlying flowfields. Approved for Public Release | 17-MDA-9219 (31 May 17)

During hypersonic reentry, the flow around reentry vehicles is dominated by its high enthalpy and high temperature effects, which must be properly modeled in order to generate flowfields from which trustworthy vehicle signatures can be extracted. Ionization, plasmas, non-equilibrium chemistry and modeling of vibration energy, surface chemistry including ablation and associated surface recession, and path dependent surface heating all have non-trivial contributions to the flowfield. Modeling these flows requires expertise, advanced tools and substantial user time. The Phase II program will address these issues by developing a toolset and standardized workflow which will allow for production level generation of these flowfields with greater ease and at a significantly reduced time-cost. The well-documented workflow will incorporate best practices for hypersonic simulations, and include a distributable example problem characteristic of real flight vehicles that can be used for benchmarking.Approved for Public Release | 18-MDA-9710 (6 Jul 18)