PhD Defense Christopher Williams "Direct and Large-Eddy Simulation of Turbulent Hypersonic Boundary Layers In Thermochemical Non-Equilibrium"

Activated by elevated temperatures in the shock layers of hypersonic vehicles, non-equilibrium thermochemical effects including dissociation/recombination phenomena and ionization, together with near-wall turbulence structures, mediate the unsteady heat fluxes, ablation rates, and vibrational loading imposed during high-speed flight. By leveraging computational-methods development for non-equilibrium flows, high-resolution direct numerical simulations of hypersonic boundary layers are performed to characterize turbulence-chemistry interaction over non-catalytic and ablative surfaces at re-entr