Assessment of Thermochemistry modelling for Hypersonic Non-Equilibrium

flow in Martian atmosphere (CO2-species) using SU2-NEMO and Mutation++

A U Nachiketh Kumar
Aerospace Undergraduate, Dept of Aerospace Engineering
M S Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences
Bangalore, India

Abstract: Accurate prediction of the aerothermal environment is of great significance and has been a challenge to
space exploration and return missions. Unsteady and non-equilibrium aerothermodynamic phenomena are the
source of the dominant acoustic and thermal loads experienced by hypersonic systems, effecting changes in the
environment both locally and over large regions of the vehicle surface. At the heart of this problem lies the current
inability to accurately predict the complex fluid dynamic, thermodynamic and chemical phenomena associated
with hypersonic flows.

Current work aims to study the aerothermodynamic environment of the flow field existing during Martian
atmospheric entry with CO2 mixture as gas species. The numerical calculation were focused on simulating high-
enthalpy flight conditions of Mach 5.87, over large angle blunt cones (120 & 60 degree nose apex angles), used
as forebody configuration for planetary entry spacecrafts. To this purpose, the SU2-NEMO solver has been used
to solve non equilibrium flow coupled with Mutation++ library (Multicomponent Thermodynamic And Transport
properties for IONized gases in C++) that provides all the necessary thermochemical properties of the mixture
and chemical species. The main objective of the work is to estimate the heat flux distribution on the forebody
surface and to validate the results with experiments conducted in free-piston HST-3. Numerical predictions
indicate a quite good agreement with experimental data, both for 120- and 60-degrees apex angles. Real gas
aerothermodynamics and reaction mechanism of gas species on the vehicle forebody have been taken into account
and implementation of numerical solution methodology is described. The effects of chemical nonequilibrium on
the vehicle forebody are pointed out, by comparing the results of frozen chemistry and finite rate chemistry flows.
Furthermore, results comparison between FLUENT and SU2-NEMO solvers confirms SU2 having good heat flux
prediction capability in nonequilibrium conditions. This work confirms the validation of open-source code for the
forementioned case and emphasises understanding of the flow chemical environment is crucial for the exact
prediction of the vehicle aero heating.