Investigation of computational flow field over a re-entry capsule at high speed

Abstract

Manned space programme has become inevitable in the modern world. One important aspect in such endeavors is getting the crew back to home safe and sound. Re-entry capsules are widely used for bringing back astronauts back to the Earth. The re-entry mission is a very crucial one, with speeds up to 30 times than that of sound and temperatures hot enough to ionize air. The study and design of a re-entry capsule has to be done with utmost concern over the life of returning astronauts. In this paper, simulations carried out over a re-entry vehicle for various free-stream conditions such as subsonic, supersonic and hypersonic flow regimes. Results were obtained by solving compressible Navier-Stokes equation with k-omega turbulent model. Simulations were carried out for various inlet conditions corresponding to an altitude of a re-entry vehicle by using CFD code SU2. The geometrical parameters of a re-entry vehicle such as spherical nose radius and cone angle were varied and the effects of the aerodynamic phenomena such as shock wave, flow separation and wake formation over a downstream of a module were studied. In this paper, the results pertaining to the pressure distribution, the Mach contour and temperature over a module is presented.

Keywords

• computational fluid dynamics
• re-entry vehicle
• shock wave disturbance
• turbulent flow