| The purpose of this research was to develop a model of boundary-layer energy transport in electric launchers, and perform a numerical simulation to investigate the influence of turbulence, thermal radiation and ablation on energy flux to the surface. The model developed combines boundary-layer conservation equations with a k-ω turbulence model and multi-group radiation transport, and uses plasma models for fluid properties such as viscosity, thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity. The resulting TURBFIRE computer code is the first code to model turbulence and radiation transport in a self-consistent manner for electric launchers. Although approximations have been made to simplify the physics enough to permit a numerical solution, this is the most comprehensive boundary-layer simulation of turbulence and radiation transport to date. |
