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Chen, Y.-S.

Publications and source records attributed to Chen, Y.-S..

Overview of CFD Analyses Supporting the Reusable Solid Rocket Motor (RSRM) Program at MSFC

During the past year, various computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analyses were performed at Marshall Space Flight Center to support the Reusable Solid Rocket Motor program. The successful completion of these analyses involved application of the CFD codes FDNS and CELMINT. The topics addressed by the analyses were: (1) the design and prediction of slag pool accumulation within the five inch test motor, (2) prediction of slag pool behavior and its response to lateral accelerations, (3) the clogging of potential insulation debonds within the nozzle by slag accumulation, (4) the behavior of jets within small voids inside nozzle joint gaps, (5) The effect of increased inhibitor stiffness on motor acoustics, and (6) the effect of a nozzle defect on particle impingement enhanced erosion. The emphasis of this presentation will be to further discuss the work in topics 3, 4, and 5.

Stewart, Eric↗

Numerical Investigation of Slag Behavior for RSRM

It is known that the flow field of the redesigned solid rocket motor (RSRM) is very complicated due to the complex characteristics of turbulent multi-phase flow, chemical reaction, particle combustion, evaporation, breakup and agglomeration etc. It requires multi-phase calculations, chemical reaction simulation, and particle combustion, evaporation, and breakup models to obtain a better understanding of thermophysics for the RSRM design using numerical methods. Also, the slag buildup due to the molten particles is another factor affecting the performance of the RSRM. To achieve this goal, the volume of fluid (VOF) method is used to capture the free surface motion so as to simulate the accumulation of the molten particles (slag) of the RSRM. A finite rate chemistry model is used to simulate the chemical reaction effects. For multi-phase calculations, the Hermsen combustion model is used for the aluminum particle combustion analysis and the Taylor Analogy Breakup (TAB) model is used for the particle breakup analysis. An interphase mas-exchange model introduced by Spalding is used for the evaporation calculation. The particle trajectories are calculated using a one-step implicit method for several groups of particle sizes by which the drag forces and heat fluxes are then coupled with the gas phase equations. The preliminary results predicted a reasonable physical simulation of the particle effects using a simple two dimensional solid rocket motor configuration. It shows that the AL/AL2O3 particle sizes are reduced due to the combustion, evaporation, and breakup. The flow field is disturbed by the particles. Mach number distributions in the nozzle are deformed due to the effect of particle concentrations away from the center line.

Liaw, P.↗

Computation of turbulent flows using an extended k-epsilon turbulence closure model

An extended kappa-epsilon turbulence model is proposed and tested with successful results. An improved transport equation for the rate of dissipation of the turbulent kinetic energy, epsilon, is proposed. The proposed model gives more effective response to the energy production rate than does the standard kappa-epsilon turbulence model. An extra time scale of the production range is included in the dissipation rate equation. This enables the present model to perform equally well for several turbulent flows with different characteristics, e.g., plane and axisymmetric jets, turbulent boundary layer flow, turbulent flow over a backward-facing step, and a confined turbulent swirling flow. A second-order accurate finite difference boundary layer code and a nearly second-order accurate finite difference elliptic flow solver are used for the present numerical computations.

Chen, Y.-S.↗

Dynamic ground effects on a two-dimensional flat plate

The effect of time-variant vortex shedding is simulated by a sequence of discrete vortices convecting downstream in the wake of a two-dimensional flat plate whose lifting condition is modeled by means of the quasi-vortex lattice method. The boundary condition of this problem is specified in such a way that the tangency condition on the surface of the flat plate is satisfied; the boundary condition also takes into account the effect of airfoil motion relative to the ground. Significant lift changes are shown to occur, due to the dynamic ground effect, that are crucial in aircraft takeoff and landing transitions.

Chen, Y.-S.↗