SBIR/STTR Award attributes
Computational modeling of hypersonic flows is now more important than ever with the recent push in hypersonic technologies in NASA and in the defense industry. The state-of-the-art computational fluid dynamic (CFD) capabilities, however, still have many limitations in terms of accuracy, fidelity, and robustness which need to be addressed. For example, a 3-D Navier-Stokes solution with thermal and chemical nonequilibrium requires on the order of weeks to develop a sensible grid, the gridded geometry must be greatly simplified, requires careful monitoring of the solution as it runs since the problems are numerically ldquo;stiffrdquo; and are quick to ldquo;crashrdquo;, and the solution accuracy is limited by the numerical schemes employed.In response to this need, we propose to develop a compressible CFD solver employing a novel moving Discontinuous Galerkin with Interface Conservation Enforcement (MDG+ICE) approach including thermal and chemical non-equilibrium physics. In addition to all of the advantages of standard DG methods, discontinuous interfaces are not explicitly tracked and rather solved and obtained implicitly as a result of the interface conservation enforcement, which is enforced via grid movement. The MDG+ICE method represents a fundamentally grounded and break-through approach, and is specifically designed for flows with discontinuities and therefore especially attractive for hypersonic flows. This capability would enable a faster turn-around for modeling the complex physics relevant to entry-type problems due to increased robustness, higher order numerics less sensitive to mesh topologies and resolutions, and flexibility afforded by unstructured grids.
