Numerical simulation of the thermal non-equilibrium flow-field characteristics of a hypersonic Apollo-like vehicle

Abstract

In order to investigate the relationship between the flow-field parameters outside the vehicle and the altitude, this paper takes the Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator (ARD) with an angle of attack of –20° as the research object and adopts a two-temperature model coupled with the shear-stress transport k–ω turbulence model to focus on the variation of flow-field parameters including flow-field pressure, Mach number and temperature with the reentry altitude. It is found that the flow-field high-pressure region and low-Mach region both appear in the shock layer near the head of the ARD, while the maximum pressure of the surface appears on the windward side of the ARD’s head with a toroidal distribution, and the numerical magnitude is inversely proportional to the radius of the torus. With fluid through the shoulder of the ARD flow expansion plays a dominant role, the airflow velocity increases, the Mach number of the windward side of the rear cone increases and the flow-field pressure and surface pressure rapidly decrease. When the fluid passes through the shock layer, the translational–rotation temperature will increase before the vibration–electron temperature, there is a thermal non-equilibrium effect and the two temperatures will rapidly decrease again when approaching the surface of the ARD due to the existence of temperature gradient. At the same time, both the windward side of the shoulder and the back cover of the ARD suffer from a large thermal load and require thermal protection.