In recent years, interest in hypersonic flight was renewed due to promising new civil and military applications. Because of the high Mach number, hypersonic flows are characterized by a large thermal load on the vehicle, accurate prediction of which is crucial for mission success. Coupled fluid/solid simulations, also known as Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT) simulations can be used to determine the temperature distribution in the fluid and solid simultaneously. In this thesis, the fluid mechanics solver NSMB (Navier Stokes Multi Block) was extended with CHT functionality. The solid domain is spatially discretized with the 3D finite-volume method, a time-accurate explicit Runge-Kutta method is used for the temporal discretization, and the two domains are tightly coupled. Along the domain interface, the CHT boundary condition is solved, which ensures energy conservation and temperature continuity. In addition to the conductive heat fluxes, the heat fluxes due to species diffusion and convex surface radiation are included. Constant and temperature-dependent material properties can be used for the solid material. Improvements for the turbulent heat flux model and bow shock mesh adaptation are also implemented in NSMB to improve the fluid solution. The CHT method was then successfully validated against multiple test cases. An analysis of the implemented algorithm shows that a method that is first-order accurate in space at the solid/fluid interface is more robust than a second-order method. Furthermore, it was found that the heat flux due to species diffusion is negligible in equilibrium flows at moderate freestream Mach numbers. CHT analysis of a challenging shock/turbulent boundary layer interaction case reveals that unsteady heating effects can also be important for short duration experiments. The CHT simulation matched experimental results significantly better than fluid-only simulations. Finally, coupled simulations of a generic flap at different flap angles and forebody nose radii in hypersonic flow showed that a thick entropy layer can decrease the flap temperature and increase the flap effectiveness. Additionally, separation length increases due to the higher surface temperature in coupled simulations.    «

In recent years, interest in hypersonic flight was renewed due to promising new civil and military applications. Because of the high Mach number, hypersonic flows are characterized by a large thermal load on the vehicle, accurate prediction of which is crucial for mission success. Coupled fluid/solid simulations, also known as Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT) simulations can be used to determine the temperature distribution in the fluid and solid simultaneously. In this thesis, the fluid mechanics...    »