Towards a High-Fidelity Multiphase Solver with Application to Space Debris Aerothermal Ablation Modeling

Henneaux, David [UCL] Schrooyen, Pierre [CENAERO] Barros Dias, Bruno [UCL] Turchi, Alessandro [von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics] Magin, Thierry [von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics] Chatelain, Philippe [UCL]

With the ever increasing annual launch rates and future in-orbit collisions, the sustainability of space activities is threatened by the exponential growth in the number of space debris orbiting the Earth. To face up to this worrying and unprecedented situation, the current design configurations will have to be adapted in order to maximize the destruction of re-entering decommissioned spacecraft parts. To sustain the implementation of these new technologies, grouped under the Design for Demise terminology, the development of reliable numerical methods able to simulate the complex multi-physical material response of ablating debris is essential. The first elements necessary for the establishment of such a software, namely the adaptation of the discontinuous Galerkin Argo solver to general equations of state and the use of a novel sharp interface method, are addressed in this work. The verification of the implementation of these two elements are conducted through comparisons with exact solutions and the SU2 code. The results obtained show good agreements and pave the way for the development of the next building blocks of this numerical tool.