Numerical simulations and experimental comparisons for high-speed nonequilibrium air flows

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique is employed to study hypersonic high-enthalpy air flows around blunt bodies with the purpose of predicting convective heat transfer on the body surface for a range of flow velocities relevant to suborbital flight of re-entry vehicles such as the Space Shuttle Orbiter (USA), and the Buran (Russia). The method uses Park's two-temperature model for the description of thermochemical nonequilibrium processes in high-temperature air and solves the full Navier-Stokes equations for a model of multicomponent reacting gas mixture in the finite volume formulation. The calculations performed in this research are intended to simulate some experiments carried out in the high-energy shock tunnels of the DLR, Germany, and the CALSPAN, USA, where the heat flux distribution over a model surface was measured at several freestream conditions related to the range of velocities mentioned above. The main emphasis is on comparing numerical and experimental results in order to verify adequacy of the heat flux data predicted by the CFD technique for suborbital flight speeds of re-entry vehicles. (C) 2000 The Japan Society of Fluid Mechanics and Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.