Multiphysics Coupled Fluid/Thermal/Structural Simulation for Hypersonic Reentry Vehicles

The main goal of the work described in this paper was to set up a procedure for modeling a thermal protection system for a hypersonic reentry vehicle by extending earlier work done by the authors. A multiphysics framework has been setup for the simulation of hypersonic reentry vehicles using commercial codes FLUENT and LS-DYNA with user-defined programming. The computational fluid dynamics code (FLUENT) and the material thermal and structural response code (LS-DYNA) are loosely coupled to achieve the solution. The surface recession resulting from ablation in the reentry vehicle is simulated by implementing a mesh movement algorithm in LS-DYNA. The vehicle considered in the calculation is an axisymmetric vehicle flying at zero degree angle of attack.