Modeling of the high altitude portion of reentry vehicle trajectories with DSMC or statistical BGK solvers requires accurate evaluation of the boundary conditions at the ablating TPS surface. Presented in this article is a model which takes into account the complex ablation physics including the production of pyrolysis gases, and chemistry at the TPS surface. Since the ablation process is time dependent the modeling of the material response to the high energy reentry flow starts with the solution of the rarefied flow over the vehicle and then loosely couples with the material response. The objective of the present work is to carry out conjugate thermal analysis by weakly coupling a flow solver to a material thermal response model. The latter model solves the one dimensional heat conduction equation accounting for the pyrolysis process that takes place in the reaction zone of an ablative thermal protection system (TPS) material. An estimate of the temperature range within which the pyrolysis reaction (decomposition and volatilization) takes place is obtained from Ref. [1]. The pyrolysis reaction results in the formation of char and the release of gases through the porous charred material. These gases remove additional amount of heat as they pass through the material, thus cooling the material (the process known as transpiration cooling). In the present work, we incorporate the transpiration cooling model in the material thermal response code in addition to the pyrolysis model. The flow in the boundary layer and in the vicinity of the TPS material is in the transitional flow regime. Therefore, we use a previously validated statistical BGK method [2] to model the flow physics in the vicinity of the micro-cracks, since the BGK method allows simulations of flow at pressures higher than can be computed using DSMC.
THERMAL RESPONSE MODEL OF AN ABLATIVE MATERIALThe problem of protecting a space-capsule from the high temperature chemically reacting environment during a reentry mission has resulted in the development and successful use of ablative TPS materials. The main features of an ablative TPS material are illustrated in Fig. 1. Most ablative TPS materials use reinforced composites employing organic resins as binders. The surface temperature of the ablative material rises due to the incident heat flux, with its rate of increase depending on the magnitude of heat flux and the thermophysical properties of the material such as the specific heat and thermal conductivity. The low thermal conductivity of the ablative material effectively concentrates the absorbed heat in the surface region, thereby protecting the inner layers of TPS from significant temperature increases. As the surface material reaches sufficiently high temperature, the resin undergoes the endothermic processes of decomposition and sublimation, known as pyrolysis. The process of pyrolysis produces gaseous products that percolate toward the heated surface and are injected into the boundary layer. The pyrolysis of the resin also results in the formation of a...