COMPUTATION OF 3-DIMENSIONAL HYPERSONIC FLOWS IN CHEMICAL NONEQUILIBRIUM

An algorithm for the simulation of three-dimensional hypersonic flows in chemical nonequilibrium is presented. The basic flow solver is based on a quasiconservative formulation of the Euler or Navier-Stokes equations. The Jacobi matrices are split according to the sign of their eigenvalues. The derivatives of the conservative variables are split accordingly. A third-order upwind space discretization is used in conjunction with an optimized three-stage Runge-Kutta explicit time stepping scheme. The chemistry source terms are treated point-implicitly. For inviscid flow, the code is applied to the complete HERMES 1.0 configuration. The influence of mesh resolution is studied by comparing a fine grid with a coarse grid solution. The coarse grid solution is usually sufficient to describe global flow phenomena. The analysis of local flow details requires refined meshes. For viscous flow, the flow about generic configurations (double-ellipse, hemisphere-cylinder-flare, hyperbola-flare) is investigated by performing grid sensitivity studies as well as by comparing different transport models.