Problem Definition: During atmospheric re-entry, materials are subjected to high enthalpy flows and release ablation products. For instance, considering Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessels (COPVs), the resin of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) material progressively pyrolyzes. Subsequently, they erode trough thermo-chemical processes, involving the carbonaceous residue and carbon fibres. Precise modelling of degradation is crucial to quantify the amount of ablation products released in the at-mosphere.
Research Objectives:
- Adaptation of the computational tools to assess the degradation of COPVs exposed to high-enthalpy flows
- Simulation of experimental results obtained in the VKI Plasmatron (existing data) and US arc-jet facilities and development of a surrogate model
- Calibration and validation of computational model using a Bayesian inference method applied to the surrogate model
- Prediction of ablation products during re-entry scenario
Expected Results:
- Gas-surface interaction model for re-entering COPV
- A numerical database of high-enthalpy flow ground experiments
- A numerical database of ablation products for re-entry scenario
Secondments:
- von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics (VKI, Sint-Genesius-Rode, Belgium, ca. 4 months): Simulation of existing VKI Plasmatron tests
- University of Stuttgart (US, Stuttgart, Germany, ca. 4 months): simulation of arc-jet experiments
Main Supervisor:
Co-Supervisors:
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