Thermal Fluid-Structure-Interaction on a Flat-Plate Model in Hypersonic High-Enthalpy Flow

Abstract

The validation of a numerical environment for the coupled analysis of thermal protection systems and hot structures in interaction with a high-enthalpy hypersonic flowfield was carried out. The simulation of the thermal fluid-structure interaction on a ceramic flat-plate model was conducted by means of the DLR TAU code and of the commercial software ANSYS. The comparison with experimental results was achieved with tests in the high-enthalpy facility L3K in Cologne. The computations were shown to properly capture the temperature trend on the considered surface, but the temperature values were underpredicted. Further numerical investigations pointed out a partially catalytic behaviour of the ceramics at such temperature levels and a non-perfect thermal contact between structure parts.