Fluid-solid-ablation coupled calculation of hypersonic vehicle based on rbf grid deformation method

Abstract

Abstract The ablative phenomenon of the thermal protection system happens when the hypersonic vehicle suffers serious challenges of aerothermal due to high Mach number. To determine whether the thermal protection system is destroyed, the fluid-solid-ablation loosely coupled method for Carbon-Carbon composite materials is proposed to calculate the deformation of ablation and acquire the deformed shape. Navier-Stokes equation, heat conduction equation, and linear ablation model are applied to calculate the fluid field, the solid field, and the ablation receding amount. As one of the most widely applicable dynamic mesh methods, the Radial Basis Functions (RBF) dynamic method is used to get the deformed solid mesh. The ablation of a missile is computed and analyzed. It could be found that the surface temperature of the head increases during flight and the ablation of the surface results in the change of the vehicle’s shape. The ablative layer thickness of the thermal protection system should be greater than the max ablative deformation, reaching 4.4 mm of the missile. The proposed fluid-solid coupling method could effectively predict the ablation deformation of the vehicle and guide the design of hypersonic vehicle thermal protection systems.