Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2021
26th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
Thermochemical nonequilibrium computation of Apollo capsule during the reentry phase
Submission Author:
Fortunato Neto , SP
Co-Authors:
Fortunato Neto, Ruan Ramon Penha dos Passos Pereira, Rodrigo Palharini, Cayo Prado Fernandes Francisco
Presenter: Fortunato Neto
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2021.COB2021-1172
Abstract
Atmospheric reentry is the most critical part of space missions as heat protection, vehicle integrity and communications are severely affected by the extreme non-equilibrium flow conditions involving high temperatures, strong shock waves, chemical dissociation and recombination and plasma formation. The accurate prediction of these phenomena is crucial to guarantee personal and payload safety during this mission stage. The most well known method used to obtain aerothermodynamic predictions for these non-equilibrium, rarefied, chemically reacting flows is the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) particle method. Here, the aerothermodynamic properties around the Apollo vehicle with Mach 21 reentry conditions were analyzed, with emphasis on the quantification of the effect of non-equilibrium chemical reactions in the prediction of heat fluxes. Computations used a recent axisymmetric version of the DSMC code, dsmcFoamPlus, implemented in the OpenFoam framework. The axisymmetric model produced similar results compared to the three-dimensional model, where the inclusion chemical reactions led, as expected, to endothermic effects decreasing heat fluxes on the vehicle surface. Furthermore, the axisymmetric results compared well to the experimental data available showing the advantages, at least in the preliminary design phases, of the much less computationally demanding axisymmetric DSMC code.
Keywords
DSMC, Reentry, Apollo vehicle, Aerothermodynamics, Chemical reactions
