Development of a two-temperature open source CFD model for hypersonic reacting flows

The highly complex flow physics that characterise re-entry conditions have to be reproduced by means of numerical simulations with both an acceptable level of accuracy and within reasonable timescales. In this respect, a new CFD solver, hyFoam, has been developed within the framework of the open-source CFD platform OpenFOAM for modelling hypersonic reacting flows. hyFoam has been successfully validated for two 0-degree adiabatic heat bath test cases and the limitations of a one-temperature CFD model have been highlighted. To cope with high-temperature gas chemistry, the internal energy has been decomposed into its elementary energy modes, thus introducing the translational-rotational and the vibrational temperatures. A two-temperature CFD model is being implemented in order to attain a better agreement between CFD and DSMC results. Validation of the code for a single species has been executed while mixture-related libraries are currently being developed. The vibrational-translational relaxation time formulation has also been presented and discussed.