Validation of Thermal Nonequilibrium Modeling for Hypersonic Flows in RavenCFD

Accurate prediction of the aerothermodynamic response of hypersonic flight vehicles by unstructured Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solvers remains a formidable task. This work documents recent efforts to implement and validate a two-temperature thermal nonequilibrium model in Corvid Technologies’ commercial solver, RavenCFD®. Details of the model implementation are provided. The validation focuses on several test cases ranging in complexity: a 0D adiabatic reactor, a low enthalpy Mach 10 flow around a cylinder, a high enthalpy flow Mach ~ 8.7 around a cylinder, and a Mach 9.59 flow over a sharp double cone. The latter two test cases have experimental surface heat flux and pressure data for validation. The effects of employing the two-temperature model are studied and code-to-code comparisons are shown with NASA’s well-established DPLR solver.