Modeling nonequilibrium aerothermochemistry in a general purpose cfd solver

There are various hypersonic flow problems of practical interest that require solution of nonequilibrium flows in order to properly resolve the important flow parameters like the surface heat transfer and the surface temperature. The complex coupling of nonequilibrium effects on the aerothermal load of a hypersonic spacecraft remains a challenging aspect of the hypersonic flow modeling. As the majority of these flow problems are in continuum regime, the CFD based methods are a viable option for modeling nonequilibrium hypersonic flows. However, there is also a lack of CFD solver with nonequilibrium capabilities that is widely used and has the ability to handle complex geometry. This work demonstrates that a commercial general purpose CFD solver can be successfully modified to solve for nonequilibrium aerothermochemistry. Various nonequilibrium hypersonic flow problems were modeled using the developed solver and the results were compared with the available experimental data. The results were in good agreement with the experiments.