Speaker
Description
At enGits, we have developed an in-house CFD code for compressible flow. From the start, this code has been designed with massively parallel hardware in mind. As a result the code is able to run very large simulations on simple PCs or similar hardware. For example, we are able to run a buffeting simulation with 100 million cells overnight on a single PC. We believe that this is interesting for demise simulations, because a large number of different conditions and configurations will need to be simulated.
The software was initially developed using immersed boundaries on Cartesian grids, which allows to effectively run many different geometries at very little pre-processing costs. Unfortunately this has often led to unwanted modeling compromises, because a detailed resolution of boundary layers with the associated friction and heat exchange effects was not always possible.
Over the past year, the code was extended in order to be able to handle arbitrary grids. Thus we are now able to run simulations with resolved boundary layers while still having a similar efficiency compared to running on Cartesian grids alone. The software can run on purely Cartesian grids, or purely unstructured grids, or on a mixture of both grids types. For the later hybrid approach we use an interpolation method similar to what is used in the overset mesh approach.
Considering the market of CFD for space applications, the next logical approach for the software development is to extend it to chemically non-equilibrium and equilibrium modeling for re-entry simulations. We have already been approached by potential customers who are interested in such a capability and we are keen to implement these features into our software in order to fill a vital need of the emerging new space industry in Europe. As of today, there are not many commercial CFD packages available which can tackle this kind of problem.
Furthermore we believe that this would also be interesting for satellite and spacecraft demise simulations. Hence we would like to present the current state of the software at this workshop and show what could already be done with it in the field of spacecraft demise. Additionally we are also seeking potential partners to bring this development forward and believe that the workshop could be a good platform to present the current state and to find ideas and possibly partners for future developments.
