Conjugate flow-thermal analysis of a

hypersonic reentry vehicle in the rarefied

flow regime
Cite as: Phys. Fluids 34, 026107 (2022); https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0082783
Submitted: 18 December 2021 • Accepted: 02 February 2022 • Published Online: 18 February 2022

Ahilan Appar, Rakesh Kumar and Srujan K. Naspoori

Phys. Fluids 34, 026107 (2022); https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0082783 34, 026107

© 2022 Author(s).
 Physics of Fluids ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/phf

Conjugate flow-thermal analysis of a hypersonic

reentry vehicle in the rarefied flow regime
Cite as: Phys. Fluids 34, 026107 (2022); doi: 10.1063/5.0082783
Submitted: 18 December 2021 . Accepted: 2 February 2022 .
Published Online: 18 February 2022

Ahilan Appar,a) Rakesh Kumar,b) and Srujan K. Naspooric)

AFFILIATIONS
Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh 208016, India

a)
ahilan@iitk.ac.in
b)
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: rkm@iitk.ac.in
c)
srujann@iitk.ac.in

ABSTRACT
A conjugate thermal analysis is performed for a charring ablative material by coupling an in-house direct simulation Monte Carlo flow solver with
an in-house material thermal response solver at the fluid–solid interface. The coupling is achieved by exchanging and updating the interface proper-
ties (convective heat flux and wall temperature) between the flow and thermal solvers at certain anchor points along the reentry trajectory. Iterative
and non-iterative coupling techniques are studied in this work and discussed. In-house flow-thermal code is validated by comparing surface heat
flux and temperature variation with those obtained from an open-source code, Stochastic PArallel Rarefied-gas Time-accurate Analyzer, from Sandia
National Laboratories, USA. The effect of introducing pyrolysis gas at the interface in the flow-thermal analysis is studied by applying a blowing cor-
rection function in an iterative manner. The effect of surface recession is also studied by enabling material degradation due to thermal ablation.
Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0082783

NOMENCLATURE q density, kg/m3

r Stefan–Boltzmann constant, 5.67  108 W/m2 K4
cp specific heat capacity, J/kg K
HPyro heat of pyrolysis, J/kg
h convective heat transfer coefficient, W/m2 K Subscripts
m _ 00c char ablation rate, kg/m2 s blw blowing corrected
m_ 00Pyro pyrolysis gas flow rate, kg/m2 s c char
n normal coordinate conv convective
Peff effective thermophysical property of a material g gas
Q_ Pyro heat of pyrolysis per unit volume per unit time, W/m3 r recovery
Q_ Tr transpiration cooling rate per unit volume, W/m3 v virgin
Q heat of ablation (energy consumed per unit mass during w wall
ablation), J/kg 1 freestream
q_ 00 heat flux, W/m2
S total recession thickness, mm
I. INTRODUCTION
s_ surface recession rate, mm/s
T temperature, K In the space exploration age, traveling to space and returning to
t time, s Earth is becoming a regular occurrence, making planetary atmospheric
V volume, m3 reentry an exciting field of study. A space vehicle cruising in the atmo-
sphere at high velocity requires thermal protection system (TPS),
Greek which forms the most crucial component of a space flight system. A
precise thickness of TPS ensures vehicle safety as well as keeping the
 surface emissivity cost of the mission under check. Thus, an efficient vehicle design not
j thermal conductivity, W/m K only reduces the TPS weight but makes room for accommodating

Phys. Fluids 34, 026107 (2022); doi: 10.1063/5.0082783 34, 026107-1

Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing
 Physics of Fluids
more payload. Materials for the TPS are selected based on numerous
parameters, such as flight trajectory, reentry velocity, atmospheric
conditions, and mission requirements. Reentry design begins with
deciding the mission requirements and then making trade-offs
between other parameters, such as deceleration, accuracy, trajectory,
heating, and vehicle design. Accurate prediction of reentry vehicle
design requires a good understanding of the thermally and/or chemi-
cally non-equilibrium flow field and the heat transfer rate to the
exposed TPS surface in an aerothermodynamic environment. Thus, in
most of the earlier studies, the reentry problem has been decoupled
into two parts. One part of the problem deals with the aerodynamic
heating prediction solved by computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
techniques.1–4 The other part deals with obtaining the thermal
response of the TPS material by solving the heat conduction inside the
solid using computational heat transfer approaches.5–8
In the past, TPS problems were solved using independent mate-
rial thermal response codes that received input from trajectory data
calculated using CFD techniques.9 The ablative thermal response
codes developed by Ames Research Center (ARC) of National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), such as the Fully
Implicit Ablation and Thermal response (FIAT) code, the Two-
dimensional Implicit Thermal response and Ablation (TITAN) code,
and the three-dimensional Finite volume alternatively directional
Implicit Ablation and Thermal response (3dFIAT) code, are exten-
sively reviewed by Chen and Milos.10 Some of the standard material
thermal response programs used for charring thermal ablation prob-
lems are reviewed in Ref. 11. A list of the same is given as follows:
Aerotherm’s Charring Material thermal response and Ablation pro-
gram (CMA),12 NASA’s Standard Ablation program (STAB),13 FIAT,
3dFIAT,7,14–16 and the Icarus17 that can solve complex geometries and
multidimensional physics is under development.
In an attempt to increase the accuracy and model the entire reen-
try ablation problem holistically, coupling techniques are introduced.
The atmospheric reentry problem involves accounting for the physical
phenomena at three regions: (1) the thermally and/or chemically non-
equilibrium flow field, (2) heat conduction inside the solid TPS mate-
rial, and (3) the coupling at fluid and solid interface. Based on how
well the interface boundary conditions between flow and thermal solv-
ers are updated, one can roughly categorize them as tightly/strongly
coupled, loosely coupled, and decoupled solvers.18 Kuntz et al.19 pro-
vided a detailed review on fluid-thermal coupling, with emphasis on
the various approaches used to couple flow and thermal solvers and
their limitations. In decoupled solvers, the flow and thermal solvers
lack bilateral communication between them. The fluid domain is inde-
pendent of the solid domain. On the other hand, flow and thermal
solvers communicate simultaneously in the case of tightly coupled
solvers, and the boundary conditions are updated constantly. Conti
et al.20 made the first attempt to tightly couple a Navier–Stokes flow
solver with a material thermal response solver for axisymmetric prob-
lems, but with several simplifications. Gosse and Candler21 also used
tightly coupled solvers with fewer simplifications, but the ablation rate
was under-predicted in the validation results. Mullenix and
Povitsky22,23 used tightly coupled parallel solver to study the ablation
of graphite. Martin and Boyd24 tried to strongly couple non-
equilibrium Navier–Stokes code, LeMANS (Le Michigan
Aerothermodynamic Navier–Stokes solver),25 with the material ther-
mal response code, MOPAR (Modeling Of Pyrolysis and Ablation
Phys. Fluids 34, 026107 (2022); doi: 10.1063/5.0082783
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ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/phf
program),26 by introducing ablating gases into the flow field. A mov-
ing mesh algorithm was used in the flow solver to incorporate the sur-
face ablation. The material thermal response code was implemented
directly as a boundary condition to the flow solver to strongly couple
the solvers, but it is computationally costly to simulate reentry flow
problems using a tightly coupled computational framework as the dif-
ference between flow and thermal timescale is enormous
(sf =ss  109 ).27 Lee and Kim28 performed thermochemical non-
equilibrium analysis for a hypersonic reentry flow over an ablating sur-
face and studied the effect of different ablation models that predicted
gas-surface interaction at the TPS surface. Some of the recent studies
focus on investigating various factors that may reduce skin friction
and aerodynamic heating on the TPS surface. Tekure et al.29 investi-
gated the effect of aerospike on the reduction of aerodynamic drag and
heating. Zhu et al.30 investigated the hypersonic transition over a
heated wall, which affects the aerodynamic heating. The effect of dif-
ferent wall boundary conditions on hypersonic boundary stability and
the transition was studied by Miro and Pinna.31
To perform flow-thermal analysis for reentry-like problems,
where the timescale difference between flow and thermal response is
of several orders of magnitude, loosely coupled strategy can be consid-
ered a compromise between accuracy and computational cost. In this
strategy, quasi-steady-state analysis for flow field with an isothermal
wall boundary condition at selected anchor points is performed. The
obtained flow field solutions are used to update the boundary condi-
tions for the thermal response solver as it marches in time. Hassan
et al.32 tried to loosely couple a non-equilibrium Navier–Stokes flow
solver with a multi-dimensional in-depth thermal response solver that
included ablation with shape change. The flow field solutions (heat
transfer coefficient, pressure distribution, and recovery enthalpy) were
maintained constant between two trajectory points, while the thermal
solver marched in time from one point to another. This explicit
approach resulted in numerical instabilities due to the non-linear
nature of the ablation process. To avoid the instability problem, Kuntz
et al.19 used an iterative approach and predicted the ablation process
more accurately. Similar iterative techniques were developed by
Olynik et al.33,34 and Kontinos35 to eliminate instabilities associated
with the explicit approach.
Numerical study of ablation problems involves predicting the
surface heat flux accurately. In the literature, the flow domain associ-
ated with an ablative TPS material is solved using various CFD solvers.
The Aerotherm Corporation’s well-established BLIMP (boundary
layer integral matrix procedure)36 code that used boundary layer
approach was coupled with an in-depth charring response procedure
(CMA)12 code in the late 1960s. Nevertheless, the shortcomings posed
by the boundary layer approach led to the usage of inviscid/
viscous,37,38 parabolized Navier–Stokes,39 and full Navier–Stokes
solvers20,33,34,40–45 to predict the flow physics. Navier–Stokes flow
solvers were conventionally used to couple with the material response
codes. However, in the flow regimes where the Knudsen number
becomes reasonably large, the continuum assumption breaks down,
and the usage of the Navier–Stokes equation to predict the flow phys-
ics becomes uncertain. Reentry vehicles are usually associated with
flow regimes with hypersonic velocity and semi-rarefied conditions
that depart significantly from the equilibrium conditions. Due to the
same reason, the vehicle will be surrounded by gases that exist in a
thermal and/or chemical non-equilibrium state. Predicting the surface
34, 026107-2
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TABLE I. Freestream conditions for the DSMC cases at different calculation points along the reentry trajectory.

Trajectory Time Altitude Velocity Temperature Number density

point (s) (km) (m/s) (K) (m3) Reference
17
1 0 120 7600 350.00 5.1060  10 56
2 6 118 7600 333.65 1.5485  1018 56
3 11 115 7600 317.30 2.5865  1018 56
4 19 113 7600 292.78 4.4339  1018 56
5 28 110 7600 276.43 5.1813  1018 56
6 37 108 7600 251.90 6.7382  1018 56
7 46 105 7600 227.38 8.2952  1018 56
8 56 102 7600 202.85 9.8521  1018 56
9 65 100 7600 186.50 1.0890  1019 48
10 74 95 7600 190.60 2.6520  1019 48
11 83 93 7600 191.04 4.0656  1019 48
12 93 90 7600 191.70 6.1860  1019 48
13 104 87 7600 197.70 1.0700  1020 48
14 116 85 7600 201.70 1.3710  1020 48
15 128 80 7600 213.70 2.8880  1020 48
16 140 77 7600 219.82 4.6982  1020 48
17 150 75 7600 223.90 5.9050  1020 48
18 160 70 7600 228.70 1.2070  1021 48

heat flux at such extreme non-equilibrium conditions is critical in the surface heat flux. The primary aim of this work is to study the effect of
vehicle TPS design. Therefore, the Boltzmann equation is used as the the charring ablator on the surface heat flux when the solid and fluid
governing equation at such conditions. The Improved Gas-Kinetic domains are coupled at the interface. The pyrolysis gas blowing at the
Unified Algorithm (IGKUA) is developed to solve the Boltzmann equa- surface and its effect on the surface properties are studied by applying
tion to capture a wide range of flow regimes from transition to contin- the blowing correction to the heat flux obtained from the iterative cou-
uum flows.46 However, solving the Boltzmann equation numerically is pled approach. The impact of various contributing factors, such as
likewise challenging, which invites the usage of the particle-based tech- blowing pyrolysis gas and ablation due to surface recession at the
nique called direct simulation Monte Carlo method (DSMC). It is a interface properties, is found to be important and discussed in the
pure simulation approach that numerically approximates the solution work. The influence of wall temperature, pyrolysis blowing rate on
of the Boltzmann equation. DSMC method has been shown to con- the flow field, and the fluid–solid interface properties, such as surface
verge toward the solutions of the Boltzmann equation in the limit of an heat flux, wall temperature, and the overall recession thickness, is stud-
infinite number of particles and vanishing cell size. More recently, in ied by performing a systematic analysis through different case studies.
an attempt to perform conjugate thermal analysis for a reentry vehicle,
Titov et al.,47 and Kumar48 loosely coupled a one-dimensional material
thermal response solver with a DSMC flow solver.
In the present work, we have carried out conjugate thermal anal-
ysis by loosely coupling an in-house direct simulation Monte Carlo
(DSMC) flow solver with an in-house material thermal response
solver. Suitable modifications, including varying surface temperature
distribution, are done to the in-house DSMC code49 to make it com-
patible for coupling with the thermal response solver. The surface tem-
perature obtained from the thermal code is applied as the boundary
condition to get the DSMC flow solutions. The coupling is iterative in
nature to avoid the instabilities associated with the explicit loosely cou-
pling technique due to the non-linear nature of ablation problems.
Table I shows the selected anchor points where the quasi-steady-state
flow field solutions are obtained. The reentry trajectory chosen for the
present work is shown in Fig. 1. The thermal response model
described in Sec. II includes various thermochemical processes in the
active pyrolysis zone, such as decomposition of virgin material, tran-
spiration cooling, and the production of pyrolysis gases that affects FIG. 1. Reentry trajectory.

Phys. Fluids 34, 026107 (2022); doi: 10.1063/5.0082783 34, 026107-3

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 Physics of Fluids
Thus, the present work contributes to understanding the ablation phe-
nomena at the coupled fluid–surface interface and how it affects the
non-equilibrium flow field and surface properties, which could be of
interest to the readers.
II. THERMAL RESPONSE MODEL OF A CHARRING
ABLATIVE MATERIAL
Materials used for thermal protection can be roughly classified
into reusable (non-ablative) and non-reusable (ablative) materials. The
usage of non-reusable ablative materials for TPS began with the space
program and paused with the shuttle program. The advent of high
speed and highly accurate computing power has reestablished the
interest in non-reusable materials for the choice of TPS.24 The ablative
material works on the principle that the heat is consumed to ablate the
material and thus prevented from penetrating further inside, thereby
saving the vehicle from severe heat loads. Ablative materials can be
typically categorized into charring and non-charring materials. In a
charring ablator, the virgin TPS material chemically decomposes to a
porous char layer with the production of pyrolysis gas that percolates
through it. In a non-charring ablator, there is no internal decomposi-
tion. However, both materials ablate at the surface through sublima-
tion and surface chemical reactions with the gas species surrounding
them.23 Ablative materials are the primary choice for the heat shield
design of space vehicles that experience high heat loads during reentry.
They are composite with carbon, glass, and organic polymers as rein-
forcement materials and phenolic-based or silicone polymer resins as
matrix materials. The matrix material undergoes decomposition and
produces pyrolysis gas leaving the char material behind. The imping-
ing heat flux increases the surface temperature that gets conducted
inside, and increases the material’s in-depth temperature. Therefore, a
desirable quality of a TPS material is to have a low thermal diffusivity,
which can absorb and trap heat at the surface and prevents it from
penetrating50 deeper inside. The ablative material will further control
the heat conduction by energy loss due to material consumption.
The governing heat conduction equation for charring ablative
material is written as follows:
ð 
@T
 ð
@T
ð   @t
qcp dV ¼ jðTÞ dA  Q_ Pyro þ Q_ Tr dV; (1)
V @t A @n V where qc is the char density; qv is the virgin density; A, n, and B are
with the following boundary conditions:

@T 
jðTÞ ¼ q_ 00conv  rðTw4  T1
4
_ 00c Q ;
Þm (2)
@n surface
 solid interface properties, such as heat flux and wall temperature. To
@T 
jðTÞ ¼ 0: (3)
@n backend
Equation (1) is based on the cell-based energy balance and solved
using finite volume formulation. The left-hand side term represents
the net rate of change of energy stored in a control volume. The first
term on the right-hand side (RHS) signifies the net rate of heat con-
ducted in a control volume, and the second term on RHS contains two
components in which Q_ Pyro denotes the rate of heat absorption due to
pyrolysis per unit volume and Q_ Tr is the rate of energy removed by
the transpiring pyrolysis gas per unit volume.
In Eq. (2), the left-hand side term refers to the net heat flux
conducted from the fluid to the solid on the exposed TPS surface. The
first term on RHS, q_ 00conv , is the convective heat flux impinging on the
Phys. Fluids 34, 026107 (2022); doi: 10.1063/5.0082783
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vehicle surface, obtained from the steady-state flow solutions along
the trajectory shown in Fig. 1. The trajectory data are obtained from
Ref. 51. The second term on RHS is the reradiated heat flux away from
the surface, where  is the material’s emissivity. The third term on
RHS is the rate of heat removal due to material ablation per unit area,
where m _ 00c is the mass loss rate per unit area and Q is the heat of abla-
tion (energy consumption per unit mass during ablation process),
which is assumed to be constant for a given material. In Eq. (3), the
term back-end refers to the surface interface between TPS material
and substrate material. It is essential to state that the adiabatic bound-
ary condition at the back-end is justified as the heat penetration inside
the material is well within safe margins. A quantitative analysis is pro-
vided in Sec. V E.
In Eqs. (1)–(3), q is the density, cp is the specific heat capacity,
and j is the thermal conductivity of the ablative TPS material. These
properties vary as a function of temperature as the material tempera-
ture varies with time due to the incident heat flux. The material ther-
mophysical properties, such as thermal conductivity and specific heat
capacity, are assumed to vary linearly between virgin and char proper-
ties for a given temperature range. The effective values, Peff, for these
properties are calculated by taking the weighted average between vir-
gin and char properties in the active pyrolysis zone and are given as
follows:
Peff ¼ fPv þ ð1  f ÞPc ; (4)
where Pv and Pc are the virgin and char properties, respectively. The
factor f denotes the fractional contribution from virgin material and
varies from unity to zero as the material decomposes from virgin to
char, and is expressed as
q  qc
f ¼ : (5)
qv  qc
The material density is calculated from the decomposition rate
expression based on the Arrhenius law as given in Eq. (6),
@q

q  qc n B

¼A eT ; (6)
qv  qc
constants whose values are obtained from the data provided by
Williams and Curry;52 and T is the current temperature.
The primary objective of this work is to study the effect of surface
ablation phenomena on the non-equilibrium flow field and the fluid–
do so, we loosely coupled the fluid and solid domains at the interface
by exchanging interface properties between flow and thermal solvers.
Therefore, the thermal response model solved by the material response
code must include the thermochemical processes inside a charring
ablative TPS material. The thermochemical processes are modeled as
follows:53
(1) Pyrolysis–an endothermic reaction that decomposes the virgin
material into porous char with the production of pyrolysis
gases. The char layer thus formed acts as an insulation for the
underlying material and prevents radiative heating from the
shock layer. Pyrolysis begins at a certain temperature, where
the material starts decomposing into porous char and continues
over a range of temperatures until the entire material turns into
34, 026107-4
 Physics of Fluids
char. In this endothermic process, the rate of heat absorbed due
to pyrolysis per unit volume denoted by Q_ Pyro is given as
follows:
Q_ Pyro ¼ qH
_ Pyro : (7)
The value of heat of pyrolysis, HPyro, for the material used in
the present work is 1163 kJ/kg, which is obtained from data
provided by Ref. 52.
(2) The pyrolysis process is accompanied by the production of low
molecular weight gases known as pyrolysis gases. The pyrolysis
gases escape to the exposed surface and form a protective layer
between the material surface and the hot shock layer. The one-
dimensional mass flux is modeled as
M
P S ¼ s_ dt:
q_ i Vi
_ 00Pyro;j ¼ i¼1
m ; (8)
Aj
where i and j are the cell indices along the radial and tangential
directions, respectively, M is the number of cells along the
radial direction, and V is the cell volume. The idea of one-
dimensional gas flow is extended to the two-dimensional sur-
face, which is assumed to be made of arrays of one-dimensional
elements. The assumption is sufficient for the present study, as
we are more interested in the pyrolysis gas interaction with
freestream gas and its impact on the interface properties. The
pyrolysis gases produced during the decomposition reaction are
assumed to be in thermodynamic equilibrium with the porous
char48 as they percolate through it. The gases are also assumed
to travel along the direction that is outward normal to the
exposed surface,11 which is consistent with the one-
dimensional gas flow assumption used in the mass flux calcula-
tion of pyrolysis gas. The pyrolysis gas also rejects heat from
the material by transpiration cooling while penetrating through
the porous structure. Thus, the rate of heat absorbed by the
pyrolysis gases per unit volume due to transpiration, Q_ Tr , is
given by the following equation:
Q_ Tr ¼ qc
_ p;g ðT  Tg Þ; (9)
where cp;g and Tg, respectively, are the specific heat capacity
and temperature of pyrolysis gas that absorbs heat from the
porous char at temperature T. The thermal model used in the
present study is realistic and straightforward, which uses experi-
mental data wherever possible and does not consider the chem-
ical reactions due to ablation. However, the Arrhenius rate
equation, which models the endothermic plastic decomposition
of virgin material, is used to obtain the density variation with
temperature. The pyrolysis gas flow rate (mass blowing rate) is
obtained from the same.
(3) The primary heat removal mechanism of ablative material is
through material consumption. After attaining the ablation
temperature, the material begins to ablate and recede, thereby
maintaining the temperature of the substructures through
phase-change process. Surface recession is modeled using Q
boundary condition.6 In this model, thermal ablation takes
place at a fixed surface temperature known as ablation tempera-
ture. The incident energy is accommodated through three active
Phys. Fluids 34, 026107 (2022); doi: 10.1063/5.0082783
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mechanisms: (1) re-radiation from the exposed surface, (2) heat
carried away by the transpired gas on the boundary layer, and
(3) heat conducted through the material.54 In the heat of abla-
tion model, the recession rate is obtained from an energy bal-
ance at the surface cells, which is described as follows:
ð ð ð 

_ 00c Q dA ¼ q_ 00conv  q_ 00c  rðTw4  T1
4
Q_ Tr dV
 
m Þ dA 
A V
ð 
Tabl  T

 qcp dV;
V @t
(10)
_ 00c
m ¼ qc s_ ; (11)
ð
(12)
In Eq. (10), the left-hand side term refers to the heat removal rate
due to material ablation. The first term on RHS denotes the net con-
vective heat flux incident on the TPS surface, and part of it gets con-
ducted and re-radiated from the surface. The second term on RHS
accounts for the energy removed by the pyrolysis gas percolating
through the charred material. The last integral in Eq. (10) is the sensi-
ble heat per unit volume, required to raise the temperature, (T), of the
surface cell with volume, (V), to the ablation temperature, ðTabl Þ. Once
a surface cell attains ablation temperature after sensible heating, the
remaining heat is used for material ablation. Equation (10) gives the
heat available for the material ablation from the incoming convective
heat flux after removing the heat through conduction, radiation, trans-
portation cooling and sensible heating. Based on the mesh displace-
ment at the front-end due to ablation, the new mesh coordinates are
calculated and updated using Eq. (11). After re-mesh is done, the cell
properties are interpolated for the latest mesh. The total recession
thickness as a function of time is calculated using Eq. (12). The mesh
used for thermal response calculations is shown in Fig. 2 in red color,
whose thickness is 71.12 mm. The thermal response model
FIG. 2. Crew exploration vehicle (CEV) geometry and mesh for flow (blue) and
thermal (red) calculations.
34, 026107-5
 Physics of Fluids
represented by Eqs. (1)–(12) is solved using the two-dimensional finite
volume method in the Cartesian coordinate system, with an explicit
scheme for time discretization. The in-house code developed for solv-
ing charring ablative material thermal response is called as Charring
Ablator Thermal response Solver (CATS).
III. REENTRY FLOW SIMULATIONS: DSMC SOLVER
FOR HYPERSONIC NON-EQUILIBRIUM
AEROTHERMODYNAMICS
The high-speed reentry flows considered in this work are simu-
lated using our in-house code, non-equilibrium flow solver (NFS).49
The code is coupled with an in-house thermal response solver,
Charring Ablator Thermal-response Solver (CATS). For the coupling
purpose, we made surface modifications to the in-house code. The ear-
lier version of the code49 used uniform temperature boundary condi-
tion, which is modified in this work to enable non-uniform wall
temperature boundary conditions for the flow simulations. Flow-
thermal simulations have also been carried out using SPARTA
(Stochastic PArallel Rarefied-gas Time-accurate Analyzer) developed
at Sandia National Laboratories55 to compare our results with those
obtained from the latter. It is a parallel direct simulation Monte Carlo
(DSMC) code capable of performing simulations of rarefied gas flows.
In making a comparison, SPARTA has been coupled with our in-
house thermal response solver. It can be run on single or parallel pro-
cessors by spatially decomposing the simulation domain and using
message-passing interface (MPI) techniques. The code is open-source
and can be easily modified or extended based on user requirements.
Flow simulations carried out using both 2-D SPARTA55 and in-house
NFS49 solvers in this work are computed with 40 Intel Xeon
E5–2670V3 processors.
Conventionally, the DSMC solvers use line segments to represent
a 2-D object. The input script for the code is accordingly modified to
account for the non-uniform wall temperature boundary condition for
the flow solver so that the effect of wall temperature on the flow prop-
erties can be studied. In the DSMC method, the particles are randomly
introduced into the computational domain from the inlet with veloci-
ties sampled from the equilibrium Maxwellian velocity distribution
function at the initial freestream gas temperature. The particles motion
and collision are decoupled in the DSMC algorithm, which puts com-
putational constraints in the cell size and the time step. The mean free
path at different altitudes covered in the present analysis ranged from
200 to 0.1 mm. We have kept a spatial step/cell size of 10 mm
for all the altitudes and performed the coupled calculations. It should
be noted that typically DSMC method mandates the cell size (spatial
step) to be of the order of mean free path. For all altitudes above
80 km, the cell size used is maintained below or of the same order as
the mean free path in our calculations. However, due to the limitation
of computational resources, the same could not be ensured for near-
continuum cases that range from 80 to 70 km (last four trajectory
points of our analysis). These cases, for which Knudsen number is less
than 0.002, are ideally more suitable for non-equilibrium CFD solvers,
although DSMC can also be used. However, performing coupled flow-
thermal analysis requires convergence iterations between two trajec-
tory points, which makes it even more restrictive/prohibitive to use a
cell size smaller than mean free path. Therefore, for the present study,
in which our goal is to carry out conjugate thermal analysis in DSMC
framework, we proceeded with the above-said cell size of 10 mm,
Phys. Fluids 34, 026107 (2022); doi: 10.1063/5.0082783
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which is at the most one order of magnitude (ten times) larger than
mean free path in the altitude range of 80 m–70 km. Noteworthy is the
fact that the temporal step chosen for study is 5 107 s, which is
much less than or of the same order as mean collision time at all the
altitudes studied in this work. Figure 2 shows the CEV (crew explora-
tion vehicle)-shaped geometry and the mesh (blue) used for flow sim-
ulations using NFS and SPARTA. Table I represents the freestream
conditions at different trajectory points used for the DSMC calcula-
tions performed in this work.
IV. FLOW-THERMAL COUPLING
In hypersonic reentry problems, the fluid–solid coupling can be
regarded as the physical interaction between convective heating due to
the external non-equilibrium flow field and the internal heat transfer
to the structures through the interface. Three different approaches can
achieve flow-thermal coupling: decoupled, non-iterative or explicitly
coupled, and iterative coupled. The coupling techniques are based on
the partition approach, where flow and thermal solvers are indepen-
dently used to solve the respective domains. The fluid flow solver is
provided with the Dirichlet boundary condition (temperature)
obtained from the thermal solver. The thermal response solver is pro-
vided with the Neumann boundary condition (heat flux) obtained
from solving the external flow field by the DSMC flow solver.
Performing a strongly coupled analysis using DSMC flow solver and
thermal solver with a global time step is computationally prohibitive,
since the characteristic timescale for the fluid flow to reach the steady-
state is much smaller than the characteristic timescale for the transient
heat conduction problems. The orders of magnitude difference of
sf =ss  109 ,27 makes DSMC calculations nearly impossible for
simultaneous coupling. However, this disparity can be conveniently
used to our advantage by assuming quasi-steady-state for the flow field
relative to the transient heat conduction inside the solid. The coupling
time step size has a non-negligible effect on the accuracy of the cou-
pled flow-thermal solutions. In the coupling approach, as the solution
marches along the trajectory, keeping a constant time step may put a
computational constraint on the coupled flow-thermal solver, particu-
larly while using a DSMC-based solver for flow solutions. Zhang
et al.27 used a time-adaptive approach to increase the time step size by
fixing a tolerance limit on the interface properties, thereby reducing
the number of coupling steps as the coupled solver marched in time.
A simple way to avoid the characteristic time scales difference
problem is to decouple flow and thermal domain and perform inde-
pendent analysis. This approach enables us to carry out quasi-steady-
state analysis for flow field for isothermal wall boundary condition at a
given temperature, at the selected trajectory points shown in Table I to
obtain convective heat flux as a function of time. The convective heat
flux as a function of time is applied as input to the thermal response
solver, CATS, which solves the heat conduction equation and obtains
the transient temperature history at the wall and inside the material.
However, the decoupled approach lacks the bilateral communication
between flow and thermal solver, which restricts the usage to applica-
tions of smaller duration, unlike reentry problems. Coupling becomes
crucial for reentry problems to bring out the effect of wall temperature
on the surface heat flux predictions. Non-iterative and iterative meth-
ods used in this work are based on a loosely coupled strategy in simu-
lating transient flow simulations.
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FIG. 3. Comparison of iterative and non-iterative coupling techniques: (a) non-iterative technique and (b) iterative technique.

The loose coupling technique can be regarded as a trade-off
between a strongly coupled and decoupled approach. Since strong
coupling using DSMC is impossible for reentry problems, a loosely
coupled approach is better with optimum accuracy and computational
cost. Non-iterative and iterative approaches are two different ways of
loosely coupling the flow and thermal solvers. The fundamental differ-
ence between the two is the heat flux variation between consecutive
trajectory points, as shown in Fig. 3. In the case of the non-iterative
approach, convective heat flux is maintained constant between two
consecutive trajectory points, as shown in Fig. 3(a). The method for
non-iterative coupling can be explained as follows:
(1) At the first trajectory point, with initial time t ¼ t0, the
steady-state flow solution is obtained using NFS or SPARTA, with the
isothermal boundary condition of the solid. (2) Flow solution
(convective heat flux distribution at the wall) obtained from flow
solver is provided to the thermal solver CATS as a Neumann bound-
ary condition. (3) The thermal response code, CATS, receives the heat
flux from the flow solver, solves the transient heat conduction inside
the material, and marches in time from t0 to t0 þ dt while keeping the
input heat flux constant. Physically, it means that the reentry vehicle is
moving from one trajectory point n to the next n þ 1. The wall tem-
perature Tw is updated upon reaching the next trajectory point at
(n þ 1). (4) The updated surface temperature distribution at the trajec-
tory point n þ 1 is transferred to the flow solver, as Dirichlet boundary
condition, which solves the quasi-steady-state flow solution to get the
heat flux at n þ 1th trajectory point for the next coupling step.
The non-iterative techniques assume the trajectory points are close
to each other for the heat flux to be kept constant between them.

FIG. 4. Mach number contour at different altitudes: (a) 90 km and (b) 70 km.

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 Physics of Fluids
However, highly non-linear ablation problems cause the solution to oscil-
late and diverge for a non-iterative approach. Noteworthy is that we have
coupled the wall temperature at the fluid–solid interface. The effect of
pyrolysis gas is also considered at the interface by iteratively applying
blowing correction equations, as discussed in detail in Sec. V C. However,
in trajectories where ablation is significant, this approach produces high
instabilities.19 A slight increase in heat flux causes a considerable pyrolysis
gas flow rate at the interface, reducing the subsequent heat flux resulting
in large oscillations in the prediction of surface properties as the solver
marches from one trajectory point to the next. Therefore, the iterative
coupling technique is necessary to avoid the instabilities caused by abla-
tion and improve the accuracy of surface predictions.
In the iterative coupling technique, the heat flux is not held con-
stant. Instead, a converged variation between two consecutive
FIG. 5. Iterative fluid/thermal coupling approach.
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trajectory points is obtained through an iterative process as shown in
Fig. 3(b). The method uses flow solver NFS or SPARTA to get initial
steady-state flow-field solutions at trajectory points n and n þ 1. The
convective heat fluxes, thus obtained, are linearly interpolated between
n and n þ 1 points, and the CATS code is used to predict the wall tem-
perature at n þ 1 point. The wall temperature boundary condition is
thus updated at the n þ 1 point, and a new flow field solution (heat
flux) is obtained from the flow solver at n þ 1 trajectory point. Now,
we have a new heat flux trend between n and n þ 1 points, and the
CATS code is given the new heat flux variation linearly interpolated
between the two points. This iterative process is repeated until a con-
verged solution is obtained. After convergence, the iterative process is
repeated for the subsequent trajectory points n þ 1 and n þ 2 and so
on. In the present work, considering the computational constraint
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posed by expensive DSMC calculations, we selected a finite number of TABLE II. Trajectory-wise number of iterations and the computational time taken for
anchor points (calculation points) along the trajectory to perform flow iterative method to converge using in-house solver.
simulations, in a manner to avoid abrupt jump in the altitude, while
the coupled solver marches in time along the reentry trajectory shown Total CPU
in Fig. 1. Furthermore, the iterative approach involves number of itera- Number Average CPU hours
tions between two trajectory points to get converged surface proper- Trajectory Altitude of iterations hours per for iterative
ties, which restricts the usage of very small coupling time step size. point (km) for convergence simulation method
The convergence criteria for the iterative method is based on the error 3 115 2 51 102
percentage of heat flux between two consecutive iterations, which
5 110 2 51 102
should be less than 5%. It is given as follows:
7 105 2 51 102
qi1  qi 9 100 2 52 104
 0:05; (13)
qi 10 95 2 52 104
where i is the iteration number. 12 90 2 52 104
14 85 2 86 172
V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 15 80 3 132 396
The flow and thermal simulations carried out in this work are 17 75 3 220.4 661.2
conducted on the CEV-shaped geometry with a TPS thickness of 18 70 3 414 1242
71.12 mm, as shown in Fig. 2. The charring ablative TPS material used
in the present work is composed of Avcoat 5026–39/HC-G, a low-
density glass-filled epoxy novolac system with an ablation temperature Mach number is 26. Figure 4 shows the Mach number contours at
of 922 K. The virgin and char densities of the material are 528.6 and two representative altitudes of 90 and 70 km, wherein the location of
264.3 kg/m3, respectively, while the thermophysical properties of the shock waves is also evident.
TPS material are obtained from Ref. 52. Equations (1)–(12) are solved To highlight the effect of coupling in a conjugate heat transfer
numerically using the finite volume method, with an explicit scheme analysis, we have performed a comparative study between decoupled
for time discretization. The thermal response model developed in this and coupled studies with a non-iterative (explicit) and iterative
work was validated thoroughly for non-ablation and ablation case approach. In a decoupled approach, DSMC simulations are carried
studies against the available numerical data in the NASA Technical out for all the trajectory points shown in Table I, with an isothermal
Report,50 in which thermal response data were obtained using a finite boundary condition of 295 K, which is assumed to be the initial tem-
element, Structural Performance And Resizing (SPAR) code. The perature of the TPS before commencing reentry. The obtained
detailed validation of different aspects of the in-house material thermal impinging heat flux values at different altitudes are plotted as a func-
response solver, CATS, is given in our recent work.57 Now, we discuss tion of time, as shown in Fig. 8. In a non-iterative coupling technique,
the results obtained using the above-discussed iterative and non- the DSMC simulation at the first trajectory point at 120 km is calcu-
iterative approaches for flow-thermal coupling employed for reentry lated with an isothermal boundary condition of 295 K. The heat flux
flow simulation. thus obtained is held constant, and the thermal response solver uses it
as input data to march in time from one anchor point to the next, as
A. Surface heat flux comparison
Flow simulations in the case studies are simulated in the DSMC
framework using the 2-D NFS code49 in the Cartesian coordinate sys-
tem for reentry flows. The computational grid used for the simulations
is shown in Fig. 2, which has 1.2  105 cells. The number of simu-
lated particles in the simulation domain is 1.2  106 simulated par-
ticles. The validated thermal solver is used to perform the primary case
studies that require conjugate heat transfer analysis of a crew explora-
tion vehicle (CEV) during reentry. The anchor points in the trajectory
to perform flow simulations along the reentry trajectory shown in Fig.
1 are selected to avoid sudden change in the altitude. Table I shows the
calculation points used for the flow-thermal analysis. The freestream
conditions for altitudes from 100 to 70 km are obtained from Ref. 48,
whereas for altitudes above 100 km are obtained from Ref. 56. Gaseous
species simulated in the DSMC method are N2, O2, O (at altitudes
>100 km) according to the mass fraction at the respective altitudes.
For the altitudes in between, freestream values are interpolated
between the known values at given altitudes. Mach numbers of hyper-
sonic flows that are studied in the trajectory calculations range from
20 to 27. At very high altitudes (120–102 km), the average Mach num- FIG. 6. Error percentage of iterative converged surface heat flux at different
ber is 22, while for relatively low altitudes (100–70 km), the average altitudes.

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 Physics of Fluids
FIG. 7. Heat flux convergence iterations at altitude 80 km.
shown in Fig. 3(a). Upon reaching the next trajectory point, the wall
temperature boundary condition is updated, and a new DSMC simula-
tion is carried out to obtain the heat flux at that trajectory point. The
heat flux varies as a piece-wise constant function of time in this
approach. In an iterative coupled technique, a linear variation of heat
flux is determined through an iterative process instead of keeping the
heat flux constant between trajectory points as depicted in Fig. 3(b)
and discussed in detail in Sec. IV. To quickly summarize, in the itera-
tive method, heat fluxes are calculated at the first two trajectory points
with a constant wall temperature of 295 K to obtain an initial heat flux
variation. The thermal response solver is marched in time between
these trajectory points considering a linear variation of heat flux
between two points as input to the solver. Surface temperature, the
output from the thermal solver, is then updated as the boundary
FIG. 9. Stagnation point heat flux comparison for in-house flow-thermal code with SPARTA: (a) decoupled approach and (b) iterative approach.
Phys. Fluids 34, 026107 (2022); doi: 10.1063/5.0082783
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FIG. 8. Stagnation point heat flux comparison for different coupling approaches.
condition for the DSMC simulation at the second point to obtain a
new heat flux. Now, an updated linear variation of heat flux is consid-
ered between the two points. This iterative process is repeated until
convergence of the surface temperature, as was shown earlier in Fig. 5.
Equation (13) gives the convergence criteria for the iterative
method. The factor by which computational time increases from
explicit to iterative method is equal to the number of iterations needed
for convergence, as shown in Table II. The iterative calculations are
extensive calculations for which we used 40 Intel Xeon-E5–2670V3
parallel processors to perform every DSMC flow simulation. The time
it took to complete the iterative calculations at 70 km is 31 h [total
central processing unit (CPU) hours/40] in real time. In the present
study, heat flux is the calculation variant used to check the conver-
gence of the iterative approach. The error percentage of 5% between
34, 026107-10
 Physics of Fluids
heat flux obtained from two consecutive iterations is chosen as the
convergence criteria, as given by Eq. (13). From Fig. 6, it can be
inferred that at altitudes from 95 to 70 km, the actual error percentage
is less than 5%. A representation of the heat flux convergence itera-
tions at altitude 80 km is shown in Fig. 7.
Figure 8 shows a comparison between surface heat flux at the
fluid–solid interface (stagnation point), obtained using decoupled,
non-iterative and iterative approaches. It is evident from Fig. 8 that the
decoupled approach over-predicts the heat flux, whereas both non-
iterative and iterative coupled methods predicted heat fluxes with min-
imal variations between them. Heat transfer from a fluid domain to
solid domain at the interface depends mainly on the temperature gra-
dient at the interface. Although the fluid temperature near the surface
is same for both decoupled and coupled calculations, the wall tempera-
ture is not the same. In the case of decoupled calculations, an
FIG. 10. Comparison of surface heat flux distribution for iterative and non-iterative approaches at different altitudes: (a) 95, 90 km; (b) 85, 80 km; and (c) 75, 70 km.
Phys. Fluids 34, 026107 (2022); doi: 10.1063/5.0082783
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isothermal boundary kept at 295 K (initial wall temperature) is used to
perform DSMC flow simulations at all trajectory points, whereas for
coupled calculations, the wall temperature keeps increasing (reaching
a maximum of 1600 K for non-iterative and 2000 K for iterative at
70 km) for an increasing trend in heat flux as observed in Fig. 12.
Thus, the temperature gradient at the interface decreases in the case of
coupled calculations, which explains the reduction in heat flux.
Noteworthy is that though both the coupling techniques produce heat
flux values almost equal, the non-iterative process produces large oscil-
lations in the case of ablation. Thus, an iterative approach becomes
necessary for conjugate thermal analysis of reentry vehicles composed
of charring ablative TPS materials.
Figure 9 shows a comparison of stagnation heat flux variation
with time obtained from our in-house flow-thermal code with that
obtained by employing SPARTA. This comparison is shown for
34, 026107-11
 Physics of Fluids
FIG. 11. Comparison of surface heat flux distribution between in-house flow-thermal code and SPARTA for the iterative approach at different altitudes: (a) 85 km and
(b) 75 km.
decoupled and iterative approaches only. It can be seen that the agree-
ment is quite fair between the two, which further validates our in-
house flow-thermal code.
Figure 10 shows the convective heat flux on surface vs the y coor-
dinate at different altitudes for iterative and non-iterative methods.
From the beginning of the reentry until trajectory point 14 (corre-
sponding to 85 km altitude), as shown in Figs. 10(a) and 10(b) there is
a negligible difference between the heat flux magnitudes calculated by
the two coupling techniques. From trajectory point 15 (80 km), the dif-
ference between the iterative and non-iterative coupled approaches
begins to reveal. Figure 10(c) shows the heat flux comparison at trajec-
tory points 17 and 18 (corresponding to altitudes of 75, 70 km), and
the difference in the quantity is evident. We can infer from Fig. 10
that, although at high altitudes, the variations in the heat flux are negli-
gible, the difference begins to manifest at the heights where the flow
regime is semi-rarefied, and the vehicle is still in hypersonic flow
regime. In other words, at the altitudes of peak heat flux conditions,
the difference between iterative and non-iterative techniques is appar-
ent and thus iterative coupling approach becomes necessary.
Figure 11 shows a comparison of surface heat flux variation with
time obtained from our in-house flow-thermal code with that obtained
by employing SPARTA. This comparison is shown for iterative
approach only, as this represents the most difficult test case for com-
parison. It can be seen that the agreement is quite good between the
two with a maximum difference of 5%, which is of the same order as
the typical statistical error associated with particle-based methods.
This comparison further bolsters confidence in our in-house flow-
thermal code.
B. Comparison of material temperature variation
The obtained heat fluxes, shown in Fig. 8, are applied to the TPS
material, and the thermal response is obtained by solving the validated
2-D CATS code developed in this work. Figure 12 represents the stag-
nation wall temperature variation for no ablation case with time. It is
Phys. Fluids 34, 026107 (2022); doi: 10.1063/5.0082783
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evident that decoupled approach over-predicts the surface heat flux,
and the corresponding surface temperature is also high (2150 K) rela-
tive to the other two coupling techniques. In Fig. 12, the surface tem-
perature obtained by non-iterative coupling is 1600 K at the end of
simulation, i.e., at 160 s. It is under-predicted when compared against
the iterative coupled wall temperature, which is 2000 K at the same
time. It can be explained as the heat flux is held constant between two
trajectory points in non-iterative approach, whereas, in reality, the
heat flux increases.
Figure 13 shows a comparison of stagnation temperature varia-
tion with time obtained from our in-house flow-thermal code with
that obtained by employing SPARTA. This comparison is shown for
iterative approach only, as this represents the most difficult test case
for comparison. It can be seen that the agreement is excellent between
the two, which further validates our in-house flow-thermal code.
Similarly, we have obtained a very good agreement for decoupled and
non-iterative approaches as well.
In Fig. 14, surface temperature distribution is shown for the tra-
jectory points corresponding to altitudes of 85 and 70 km are repre-
sented. It is evident that the surface temperature variation over the
surface is quite considerable between two approaches, although the
heat flux variation is slight in magnitude between iterative and non-
iterative methods, as observed in Fig. 10. At an altitude of 85 km, tem-
perature difference at the stagnation point is significant, which can be
inferred from Fig. 14(a). Similarly, at trajectory point 18, which corre-
sponds to 70 km altitude, the temperature difference at the stagnation
point is about 330 K, as shown in Fig. 14(b).
Figure 15 shows a comparison of surface temperature variation
with time obtained from our in-house flow-thermal code with that
obtained by employing SPARTA. This comparison is shown for itera-
tive approach only, as this represents the most difficult test case for
comparison. It can be seen that the agreement is quite good between
the two with a maximum difference of 2%, which is of the same
order as the typical statistical error associated with particle-based
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FIG. 12. Stagnation point surface temperature comparison between different cou- FIG. 13. Stagnation point surface temperature comparison for our in-house flow-
pling approaches. thermal code with SPARTA.

temperature differences at the peak heating conditions are significant

methods. This comparison further bolsters confidence in our in-house
enough to affect the TPS thickness design and attract further thermo-
flow-thermal code.
structural concerns.
Another comparison of iterative and non-iterative approaches
Figure 17 shows a comparison of temperature distribution
can be obtained by looking at the temperature variation through the
through the TPS thickness at front-end at 160 s (at 70 km altitude)
TPS thickness at the front-end at 160 s, corresponding to an altitude of
obtained from our in-house flow-thermal code with that obtained
70 km. Figure 16 shows the front-end temperature variation compari-
from SPARTA. It is evident that the agreement is excellent.
son between non-iterative and iterative coupling techniques. The non-
iterative method under-predicts the temperature, as the heat flux is
held constant between two trajectory points, while it was increasing in C. Effect of pyrolysis gas at the interface properties
reality. We can observe from the iterative result in Fig. 16 at 160 s (end Pyrolysis gas plays a vital role in reducing the heat flux impinging
of the simulation corresponding to an altitude of 70 km), the ablative on the charring ablative TPS material surface. The gas thus escapes as
TPS material experiences a vast temperature gradient of 1700 K a co-product of pyrolysis process, not only removes heat from the
between the front-end with 2000 K and back-end at 295 K. The material through transpiration cooling, but also forms a thin protective

FIG. 14. Comparison of surface temperature distributions for iterative and non-iterative approaches at different altitudes: (a) 85 km and (b) 70 km.

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FIG. 15. Comparison of surface temperature distributions between our in-house flow-thermal code with SPARTA at different altitudes for iterative approach: (a) 85 km and (b)
75 km.

layer between the material surface and the hot shock layer in the flow is the dimensionless blowing correction parameter calculated using a
regime. In a charring ablative material, pyrolysis gas interacts with the nondimensionalized function of mass flux from material into the
incoming freestream gas, which can cause a significant change in sur- boundary layer w, given by
face properties. In this study, we have not physically introduced pyrol-
ysis gases coming off the material surface. However, we have included _ 00g
cp;g m
the effect of blowing of pyrolysis gas on the heat flux predictions by w¼ ; (16)
h
using the simple correlation function provided by Kays,58 as used in where h is the convective heat transfer coefficient given by
the recent work by Phadnis et al.,59 given as follows:
q_ 00blw ¼ Xq_ 00conv ; (14) q_ 00conv
h¼ ; (17)
Tr  Tw
where
w where Tr is the recovery boundary layer temperature and Tw is the
X¼ (15)
ew  1 wall temperature.

FIG. 16. Comparison of temperature distribution through the TPS thickness at FIG. 17. Comparison of temperature distribution through the TPS thickness at
160 s (70 km). 160 s (70 km) between in-house flow-thermal code with SPARTA.

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The convective heat flux calculated in Sec. V A using iterative
coupling approach is used in this section to study the effect of intro-
ducing pyrolysis gas at the fluid–solid interface. The blowing correc-
tion functions for heat flux, as given in Eqs. (14)–(17), are directly
implemented in the thermal solver to account for the heat flux reduc-
tion due to pyrolysis gas blowing at the surface boundary. The heat
flux as a function of time obtained from the iterative technique, as
shown in Fig. 8, is the heat flux value that can be achieved at every alti-
tude without considering blowing effect and ablation. The relieving
effect of blowing of pyrolysis gas at the surface reduces the surface heat
flux. The reduced heat flux is calculated in an iterative manner by the
thermal solver CATS using the correlation function given above.
Figure 18 shows a comparison of iterative calculated stagnation
point surface properties (heat flux, temperature, and pyrolysis gas flux)
FIG. 18. Comparison of iteratively coupled stagnation point surface properties with and without blowing correction: (a) surface heat flux, (b) surface temperature, and (c) pyroly-
sis gas flux.
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with and without including the pyrolysis gas blowing correction. In
Fig. 18(a), it is evident that the blowing correction reduces the heat flux
drastically, particularly toward the peak heating conditions. At time 80 s,
no reduction is observed, as there is negligibly small pyrolysis gas flux
produced. However, at the end of the simulation (at 160 s), a decrease in
heat flux of about 600 kW/m2 is observed due to blowing effect.
Similarly, Fig. 18(b) shows the reduction in stagnation point temperature
due to blowing correction, with a decrease in 970 K at 160 s. Another
interesting aspect of including blowing correction can be observed in
pyrolysis gas flux itself. It can be seen from Fig. 18(c) that pyrolysis gas
blowing rate reduces significantly from 0.043 kg/m2 s to a low value of
0.006 kg/m2 s at 160 s. This is a really significant result, since the pyrol-
ysis gases coming off a surface do cause a major relieving effect, when it
comes to surface heat flux, which in turn reduces the pyrolysis gas flux.
34, 026107-15
 Physics of Fluids
FIG. 19. Comparison of iterative coupled surface properties distribution with and without blowing correction, at 160 s (70 km): (a) surface heat flux and (b) surface temperature.
Figure 19 represents the surface properties (heat flux and wall
temperature), with and without blowing correction, along the y coor-
dinate of the TPS material. The enormous reduction in temperature,
as observed in Fig. 19(b), could significantly affect the design thickness
of the TPS material and might also suggest a reconsideration of ther-
mostructural concerns.
D. Surface recession for an ablating TPS material
In this section, we enable the surface recession due to thermal
ablation in the in-house thermal response solver, CATS. In the present
work, we did not couple the effect of shape change due to surface
recession (caused by thermal ablation) between the flow and thermal
solver. We used the iterative and non-iterative heat flux values
obtained from Sec. V A and modeled the ablation process in the ther-
mal solver to evaluate the effect of iterative and non-iterative methods
on thermal ablation and surface recession. Ablating material thermal
response is calculated for the heat flux obtained from iterative and
non-iterative techniques, and the results are compared. The TPS mate-
rial chosen for the present study is Avcoat 5026–39/HC-G with a sin-
gle ablation temperature of 922 K. The ablation model used in our
work is Q with a constant heat of ablation value, which is
26.5164 MJ/kg for the candidate TPS material. The thermophysical
properties and the heat of ablation values for the TPS material are
obtained from Ref. 52.
Figure 20 shows the stagnation point properties with material
ablation, compared for both the coupled approaches. In Fig. 20(a),
the under-predicted temperature predicted using the non-iterative
method results in a delayed material ablation. In the iterative cou-
pling approach, material ablation begins at time 100 s, whereas
ablation calculated using the non-iterative approach begins at
105 s. Though the time delay is small, i.e., 5 s, it is significant
enough to impact the impinging heat flux. As seen in Fig. 20(b),
the pyrolysis gas emission for the iterative method begins early and
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thus affecting the subsequent heat flux predictions. At the end of
the simulation (at time 160 s), the total recession thickness pre-
dicted by the iterative method is 1.3 mm (1.8% of TPS thick-
ness of 71.12 mm), which can be observed in Fig. 20(c), while the
non-iterative technique predicts it to be 0.9 mm.
E. Contributions from various heat transfer
mechanisms
In this section, we have plotted the percentage contribution from
each heat transfer mechanism in removing the heat from the surface
cell, by normalizing the heat flux contribution from different terms
with convective heat flux.
In the case of non-ablative material, as observed in Fig. 21, until
130 s, when the temperature is relatively smaller, heat is conducted
predominantly. Right after 130 s, as the material temperature reaches
1300 K (65% of peak temperature at 160 s), radiation becomes the
predominant mode of heat removal. It can be inferred from Fig. 21
that, at 160 s, heat removal contributions are 29% due to conduction,
69% due to radiation, 0.06% due to endothermic decomposition
and 0.045% due to transpiration cooling. Net heat removed is 98%
and the remaining 2% is the sensible heat that raises the surface cell
temperature of the material. The material reaches a maximum temper-
ature of 2000 K at the stagnation point at the end of 160 s.
In the case of ablative material, the contribution from each term
in Eq. (10) is shown in Fig. 22. It can be observed that the material
ablation begins at 103 s. Up to 103 s, the predominant modes of
heat removal from the surface cell are conduction and radiation, but
as soon as material ablation begins, the majority of heat is removed
through material ablation. As we can infer from Fig. 22, at 160 s, a
maximum of 94% contribution to heat removal is caused by material
ablation, 2% due to conduction, 3% due to radiation and 0.01%
due to transpiration cooling. Thus, by removing maximum heat load
from the surface through material ablation, the surface temperature is
34, 026107-16
 Physics of Fluids
FIG. 20. Comparison of coupled stagnation point surface properties with material ablation: (a) surface temperature, (b) pyrolysis gas flux, and (c) total recession thickness.
maintained at 922 K. Physically, it signifies that as soon as material
ablates, fresh material is exposed, which subsequently attains ablation
temperature and gets removed from the material, as long as the
incoming heat flux increases the material temperature.
Finally, variation of stagnation temperature is shown in Fig. 23
considering different factors using iterative approach. These factors
include if a material is charring or non-charring or if a material ther-
mal ablates on surface or not. Noteworthy is the fact that a non-
charring material does not allow any pyrolysis gas ejection into flow,
thereby making it a non-blowing case. On the other hand, blowing
effect due to pyrolysis gas is finite for a charring material. Similarly,
the temperature distribution through the TPS thickness is shown in
Fig. 24 considering above-said factors. Through Figs. 23 and 24, the
effect of individual factor becomes very clear. The effect of blowing (of
pyrolysis gas) and thermal ablation (causing surface recession) is
found to be quite strong.
Phys. Fluids 34, 026107 (2022); doi: 10.1063/5.0082783
Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing
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Temperature distributions have been shown at various instants of
time for two cases: (1) non-blowing and non-ablative material, (2)
blowing and ablative material. From Figs. 24 and 25, it can be inferred
that the maximum depth the heat can penetrate is 0.02 m in every
case, which is roughly 25% of the TPS thickness. Therefore, the adiabatic
boundary condition at the back-end of TPS given by Eq. (3) can be justi-
fied as the material is operating well within a good margin of safety for
both ablative and non-ablative materials. In the iterative approach, for a
non-blowing-non-ablative material the front-end temperature reaches
2000 K whereas, for a blowing-ablative material, the maximum front-
end temperature is 920 K (ablation temperature) and the maximum
recession thickness is 1.3 mm (1.8% of TPS thickness).
VI. CONCLUSIONS
A conjugate thermal analysis is performed by loosely coupling a
DSMC flow solver and a thermal response code. The strategy
involves coupling our in-house DSMC flow solver, NFS (used for a
34, 026107-17
 Physics of Fluids
FIG. 21. Contribution from different heat transfer mechanisms in a non-ablative
material.
quasi-steady-state analysis), with a transient heat transfer code by
exchanging temperature and heat flux via the fluid–solid interface. The
2-D thermal response solver, CATS, developed in this work calculates
heat conduction inside an ablative TPS material, including models to
calculate pyrolysis gas flow rate and surface recession due to thermal
ablation. The thermal response solver is validated against well-
established results. Three different approaches were studied, namely,
decoupled, non-iterative, and iterative coupled techniques. Hypersonic
problems with a significant time duration cannot be analyzed using
the decoupled approach. The non-iterative coupling technique was
found to under-predict (or over-predict) the surface properties by
keeping the heat flux constant between two trajectory points. It also
puts a constraint on the global time step, failing which will lead to large
oscillations due to the non-linear nature of the ablation problems.
The problem is avoided by applying the iterative technique to couple
FIG. 22. Contribution from different heat transfer mechanisms in an ablative
material.
Phys. Fluids 34, 026107 (2022); doi: 10.1063/5.0082783
Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing
ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/phf
FIG. 23. Stagnation temperature variation with time considering various contributing
factors.
flow and thermal solvers. The iterative solution technique repeats
between two trajectory points by exchanging heat flux and wall temper-
ature between the flow and thermal solvers until a converged heat flux
variation is obtained. The results show that the iterative technique
predicted heat flux and temperature distribution more accurately, thus
potentially affecting the heat shield design. In the present work, the
non-iterative method under-predicted the heat flux, resulting in delayed
material ablation, which predicted a smaller total recession thickness.
Thus, a non-iterative technique might produce inaccurate results in the
design process of a TPS that uses charring ablative material.
It was also shown that our in-house flow-thermal code shows a
very good agreement for surface heat flux and temperature variation
with those obtained from the use of open-source software, SPARTA.
Through a comprehensive comparative study carried out over a range
FIG. 24. Temperature distribution through TPS thickness considering various con-
tributing factors at 160 s (70 km).
34, 026107-18
 Physics of Fluids
FIG. 25. Temperature distribution through TPS thickness at various time instants: (a) non-blowing and non-ablative material and (b) blowing and ablative material.
of altitudes, validation of our in-house flow-thermal code was estab-
lished. The effect of pyrolysis gas at the interface boundary was incor-
porated by employing a blowing correction function, which when
used in the iterative coupling technique, resulted in a significantly
reduced variation of surface heat flux along the trajectory.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors acknowledge the financial support provided by
the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) through Grant No.
STC/AE/2018033, and Science and Engineering Research Board
(SERB) through Grant No. MTR/2019/000041. We also acknowledge
the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) for providing computing
resources of “PARAM Sanganak” at IIT Kanpur, which is implemented
by C-DAC and supported by the Ministry of Electronics and
Information Technology (MeitY) and Department of Science and
Technology (DST), Government of India.
AUTHOR DECLARATIONS
Conflict of Interest
The Authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
DATA AVAILABILITY
The data that support the findings of this study are available
from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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