Computational Modeling for Conjugate Heat Transfer of Shock-Surface Interactions on Compliant Skin Panels

Aerothermal interactions play an important role in the analysis and optimization of high speed vehicles, impacting the design of the aerodynamic, structural, control, and propulsion systems at both the component and multi-disciplinary levels. This study aims to develop a CFD-FEM based partitioned aerothermal solver, for investigating the thermal response of surface panels subject to shock turbulent boundary layer interactions (STBLIs). The focus of the study is assessment of different time marching approaches for the partitioned conjugate heat transfer problem, and also the degree of coupling in STBLIs. An additional consideration is the potential for structural compliance in the system, which leads to a non-stationary shock impingement location. Preliminary results for the initial thermal response of a vibrating skin panel indicate that a one-way coupled and quasi-steady approximation yield similar panel temperatures to a fully unsteady, two-way coupled analysis. Furthermore, a static approximation, where the flow is predicted a priori without consideration of the surface motion, significantly under predicts the peak temperature rise and affected length of the panel.