Aerodynamic heating of inflatable aeroshell in orbital reentry

The aerodynamic heating of an inflatable reentry vehicle, which is one of the innovative reentry technologies, was numerically investigated using a tightly coupled approach involving computational fluid dynamics and structure analysis. The fundamentals of a high-enthalpy flow around the inflatable reentry vehicle were clarified. It was found that the flow fields in the shock layer formed in front of the vehicle were strongly in a chemical nonequilibrium state owing to its low-ballistic coefficient trajectory. The heat flux tendencies on the surface of the vehicle were comprehensively investigated for various effects of the vehicle shape, surface catalysis, and turbulence via a parametric study of these parameters. In addition, based on the present results of the computational approach, a new heating-rate method was developed to calculate the heat flux of the nonequilibrium flow. It was demonstrated that the method could well-reproduce the heat flux on the inflatable reentry vehicle.