An efficient computational method for the determination of thermal loads on a hypersonic glide vehicle along its flight path

Abstract

This study presents an efficient method for determining the thermal loads of a hypersonic vehicle along its flight path. The method is based on the loose coupling of a RANS flow solver with a simplified 3D heat conduction tool (SHCT). The coupling does not take place between each physical time step of the SHCT, but only after a much larger time interval the data is exchanged between the flow solver and the SHCT. The method is applied to a typical trajectory of a hypersonic glide vehicle. It takes about 70 hours on 2560 processors to determine the transient heat loads of the entire flight path (flight time = 550s). It is shown that by taking 3D heat conduction into account, the surface temperatures in the nose area are significantly lower than in a comparative case in which heat conduction only takes place in wall normal direction. In addition, by using an anisotropic material with greater lateral heat conduction, the temperature can be further reduced.