Towards Hybrid Overset Grid Simulations of the Launch Environment

A hybrid overset grid approach has been developed for the design and analysis of launch vehicles and facilities in the launch environment. The motivation for the hybrid grid methodology is to reduce the turn-around time of computational fluid dynamic simulations and improve the ability to handle complex geometry and flow physics. The LAVA (Launch Ascent and Vehicle Aerodynamics) hybrid overset grid scheme consists of two components: an off-body immersed-boundary Cartesian solver with block-structured adaptive mesh refinement and a near-body unstructured body-fitted solver. Two-way coupling is achieved through overset connectivity between the off-body and near-body grids. This work highlights verification using code-to-code comparisons and validation using experimental data for the individual and hybrid solver. The hybrid overset grid methodology is applied to representative unsteady 2D trench and 3D generic rocket test cases.