Numerical Simulation Of An APOLLO Like Reentry Capsule

In the process of returning to the Earth, re-entry capsule rubs against theatmosphere, which generates a lot of heat and leads to a huge kinetic energy change intothe internal energy of the air. Under the high temperature effect, some components ofthe air performing chemical reactions, like dissociation、composite and ionize, suchchemical reactions have a great impact on the flow filed of re-entry capsule, and mustbe taken into account in the process of designing an re-entry capsule. In this thesis, anumerical study on an Apollo like capsule is carried out by solving Navier-Stokesequations with the help of ESI-FASTRAN software, mainly analyzed the effects ofthermo-chemical non-equilibrium on re-entry capsule.First, verify the different chemical kinetic models by contrasting numerical resultswith experimental data, it demonstrates that Gupta’s chemical kinetic model is moresuitable for the numerical study. Numerical calculations of re-entry capsule by using theperfect gas model, the single-temperature chemical non-equilibrium gas model werealso made, as for pressure, these three gases model’s results are almost the same; butwhen it comes to temperature, double temperature model is the maximum, singletemperature model take the second place, and the perfect gas model is the minimum.The re-entry capsule in different Mach numbers and small angle of attack arenumerically is also study, it turns out that as the Mach number increasing, the re-entrycapsule’s detached shock wave distance is smaller, and the thermo-chemicalnon-equilibrium phenomenon is more obvious; the angle of attack will affect thestagnation point position of the wall, as the angle of attack gets bigger, the stagnationpoint gets closer to shoulder of the windward side. Therefore, in the process of designre-entry capsule, great attention should be paid to thermal protection of the shoulder.