Development of an Intelligent Coupling Approach for Modeling and Prediction of Cryogenic Propellant Behavior in Microgravity during Long-term Storage

The ultimate goal of the proposed project is to provide an integrated computational toolkit for NASA scientists to efficiently and accurately predict the long-term cryogenic propellant behavior in storage tanks for space mission planning. The toolkit will leverage capabilities of existing Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and nodal codes used by NASA for cryogenic propellant analysis with new efficient coupling approaches and accurate fluid dynamics and heat transfer correlations. To realize this goal, three key and central objectives are proposed: (1) enhance the accuracy of nodal models for fast simulation of complex two-phase cryogen systems by implementing physics-informed correlations or reduced thermal models based on high-fidelity reference simulations, (2) facilitate efficient use of the CFD and nodal codes for prediction of the long-term cryogenic propellant storage, and (3) deliver a fully validated analysis tool accounting for accuracy and computational speed while satisfying NASAs need for mission operations.

This project will enable integrated analysis of complex two-phase cryogenic propellant behavior in microgravity during long-term space missions as the first-of-its-kind tool. It will provide enhanced modeling capability to analyze complex physics by improving prediction accuracy and computation efficiency. The project will lead to dramatic improvements at the system level to storage tank designs with better performance and minimize time, human resources, and capitale cost for space mission planning.

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