Wall modeled large eddy simulation of high-enthalpy hypersonic flows

Hypersonic entry vehicles such as capsules operate in an extreme environment where a plethora of physical phenomena must be understood and modeled to design thermal protection systems. Among these phenomena, the interaction between turbulence and chemical reactions in the gas is generally not well understood. This work will extend wall-modeled large eddy simulations (WMLES) to incorporate chemically reacting effects, enabling scale resolved simulations of chemically reacting turbulent flows. WMLES is attractive approach to turbulence modeling for hypersonic flows because it relies on fewer modeling assumptions than Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS), the current design paradigm, at a tractable computational cost not afforded by traditional LES. This work will advance our fundamental understanding of hypersonic chemically reacting flows and enable future improvements to the RANS models currently in use for spacecraft design

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