Effects of Nonequilibrium Chemistry and Darcy—Forchheimer Pyrolysis Flow for Charring Ablator

Abstract

The fully implicit ablation and thermal response code simulates pyrolysis and ablation of thermal protection materials and systems. The governing equations, which include energy conservation, a three-component decomposition model, and a surface energy balance, are solved with a moving grid. This work describes new modeling capabilities that are added to a special version of code. These capabilities include a time-dependent pyrolysis gas flow momentum equation with Darcy–Forchheimer terms and pyrolysis gas species conservation equations with finite-rate homogeneous chemical reactions. The total energy conservation equation is also enhanced for consistency with these new additions. Two groups of parametric studies of the phenolic impregnated carbon ablator are performed. In the first group, an Orion flight environment for a proposed lunar-return trajectory is considered. In the second group, various test conditions for arcjet models are examined. The central focus of these parametric studies is to understand the effect of pyrolysis gas momentum transfer on material in-depth thermal responses with finite-rate, equilibrium, or frozen homogeneous gas chemistry. Results indicate that the presence of chemical nonequilibrium pyrolysis gas flow does not significantly alter the in-depth thermal response performance predicted using the chemical equilibrium gas model.