An aerothermodynamic analysis of the forebody aeroshell of the Stardust Sample Return Capsule is carried out by using the axisymmetric viscous shock-layer equations with and without fully coupled radiation and ablation. Formulation of the viscous shock-layer equations with shoulder radius as the length scale and implementation of the Vigneron pressure condition allow resolution of the flowfield over the shoulder. With a predominantly supersonic outflow over the shoulder, a globally iterated solution or viscous shock-layer equations can be obtained. The stagnation-point results are obtained along a specified trajectory, whereas detailed calculations along the body are provided at the peak-heating point. The equilibrium calculations with ablation injection are the focus of the present study because of the lack of a general chemical nonequilibrium analysis that accounts for both surface and flowfield effect. The equilibrium calculations also provide a simple way to conserve surface (and flowfield) elemental composition for the current small ablation injection rates, where the surface elemental composition is a mixture of freestream and ablator elements. Therefore, the coupled laminar and turbulent flow solutions with radiation and ablation are obtained by using the equilibrium flow chemistry, whereas a nonequilibrium chemistry model is used for solutions without ablation and turbulence. Various computed results are compared with those obtained by the other researchers.
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