A review of Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes modeling for hypersonic large cone–flares

What is it about?

The paper reviews the predictive capabilities of Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling by compiling previous research on the simulation of two specific academic geometries: hypersonic cone-flares experimentally studied under various flow conditions. A general observation is the difficulty in achieving consistent predictions with RANS turbulence models, which often lead to significant overestimations of aerodynamic forces and heating. This work presents a new code-to-code comparison, incorporating CFD codes from various contributors in the hypersonics community. The results reveal a wide range of flow field predictions, primarily attributed to differences in the RANS turbulence models employed. The study also highlights challenges in comparing results due to inconsistencies and the limited documentation of turbulence models in the open literature. To address this, the authors advocate for improved naming conventions aligned with NASA’s turbulence modeling resource guidelines and offer several recommendations for future studies.

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Photo by Hermeus on Unsplash

Photo by Hermeus on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Reproducibility of published numerical research in the hypersonic community remains a significant challenge, largely due to the lack of clear documentation regarding the turbulence models used in simulations. This paper highlights this issue by compiling previous research on two hypersonic geometries and re-simulating them using a variety of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes.