Unified calculation of hypersonic flowfield for a reentry vehicle

A unified computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method is developed that integrates numerical methods for solving specific problems related to aerodynamic heating phenomena and ablative heatshield. With the use of this unified CFD code, trajectory-based analysis on the aerodynamic heating environment for the MUSES-C superorbital reentry capsule is conducted. Converged solutions can be obtained by loosely coupling the CFD code and the charring materials ablation code within a few iterations. The results show that the wall surface temperature in the downstream region is significantly elevated by the effect of turbulence due to ablation product gas. Wall temperature as well as the recession rate at the stagnation point along the entry trajectory is found to duplicate well the existing predictions.