Numerical Study of Plasma-Assisted Aerodynamic Control for Hypersonic Vehicles.

Abstract

Plasma actuators and various forms of volumetric energy deposition have received a good deal of research attention recently as a means of hypersonic flight control. Ground-based and flight experiments are extremely expensive and potentially dangerous, thus creating a need for computational tools capable of quickly and accurately modeling these devices and their effects on the flow-field. This thesis addresses these limitations by developing and incorporating several new features into an existing parallelized three-dimensional flow solver to accurately account for electromagnetic effects.

A phenomenological heating model is developed and coupled to the fluid solver to investigate whether a practical level of pitch moment control can be achieved from volumetric energy deposition for a representative hypersonic vehicle. The results imply that the shape of the deposition volume does not have a significant effect on the flow structure, whereas the amount of energy deposited greatly influences the flow-field. The results suggest that these systems could be potential replacements for traditional mechanical flaps.

While the phenomenological heating model sufficiently characterizes the downstream flow properties, it is a highly simplified physical model. To improve the physical fidelity and accuracy in the near-field, a three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) solver is developed and coupled to the fluid solver. This solver accurately computes the current density and electric field, and accounts for their effects on the flow-field.

A particularly important parameter in the MHD solver is the electrical conductivity. Although several semi-empirical models exist in the literature, none provide generality across different flight regimes and gas compositions. Boltzmann's equation provides the necessary generality, but directly coupling a Boltzmann solver to a fluid solver is computationally prohibitive, even for a modern, multi-processor computing facility. A surrogate model of solutions to Boltzmann's equation is developed and coupled to the fluid solver to provide the accuracy and generality of the Boltzmann solver without the computational expense. With this accurate electrical conductivity module, the coupled MHD-fluid solver is used to investigate the effectiveness of a MHD-heat shield, a device that uses a magnet positioned near the bow of the vehicle to reduce the amount of heat transferred to the vehicle.