Multiphysics Modeling of Electromagnetic Wave-Hypersonic Vehicle Interactions Under High-Power Microwave Illumination: 2-D Case

Abstract

During hypersonic flights of a space vehicle, shock heating ionizes the molecules of the surrounding air, which will create a plasma sheath that covers all or part of the vehicle. The plasma sheath absorbs and reflects electromagnetic (EM) waves, resulting in communication blackout of the installed electronic devices or systems. Moreover, when a high-power microwave (HPM) illuminates the moving vehicle, the constituent parameters of the plasma sheath will be altered since the plasma covering absorbs part of the energy of the HPM. In consequence, the transmission and scattering properties of the high-speed vehicle to the EM communication signals are changed. In order to investigate the complicated interactions among the plasma sheath, the HPM, and the low-power communication EM signals, a multiphysics model based on the computational fluid dynamics and the computational EMs is proposed, and the corresponding numerical solution is provided as well. Since the primary aim of the paper is to reveal the multiphysics method and relevant phenomenon, both the theoretical derivations and numerical examples are only presented in the 2-D space.