Simulation of pyrolysis gas within a thermal protection system

As the first part of an ongoing study on heat flux and abation on hypersonic vehicles, a material response implicit solver with solid ablation and pyrolysis is developed. As a first step, code-to-code validations and comparisons with experimental data are performed. A study of the various effects of pyrolysis gas within an ablator is also performed; using realistic re-entry conditions on a generic carbon-phenolic ablator, conditions for non-Darcian behavior are modeled, suggesting the use of Forchheimer’s Law to calculate gas velocity. The necessary conditions required for kinetic energy to be relevant are also highlighted. The code is then coupled to LeMANS, a CFD solver for the simulation of weakly ionized hypersonic flows in thermo-chemical non-equilibrium developed at The University of Michigan. A summary of the coupling validation is presented. All results show good agreement with published numerical results or analytical solutions.