Seminar: Toward predictive models for gas phase phenomena in hypersonic flows - Sept. 11
Robyn Macdonald
Assistant Professor, Smead Aerospace
Friday, Sept. 11 | 10:40 A.M. | AERO 111
Abstract: Understanding hypersonic flowfields is important for vehicle design for both space exploration and national defense applications. However, computational models for hypersonic flows require coupling a variety of physics which may not be well understood.Ìý
As one example, gas phase chemical reactions can affect the energy balance, and can couple with other flows physics to impact the prediction of surface quantities such as heat flux. In addition, surface roughness either due to design or ablation can trigger transition to turbulence, which also influences both heat flux and aerodynamic loads crucial for vehicle design.Ìý
This talk will highlight work aimed at improving predictive capabilities for hypersonic flows focused in two areas: first, understanding the fundamental chemical processes occurring in hypersonic flows and constructing models for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for such processes, and second, enabling high-fidelity simulations of turbulent hypersonic flows including the effects of chemistry or roughness. In the first area, we make use of ab initio chemistry data to understand at a microscopic level the chemical processes occurring in the gas.Ìý
Using information and data from microscopic scale simulations, we construct simplified models for application to CFD. In the second area, I will highlight work focused on incorporating finite rate chemistry phenomena to enable scale resolved simulations of hypersonic flowfields using large eddy simulation, as well as work focused on understanding the effect of roughness on supersonic turbulent boundary layers.
Bio: Robyn Macdonald is an Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research interests include gas-phase chemical kinetics, and turbulence and transition modeling for hypersonic flows. Prior to joining CU, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota. She received her B.S. and Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2013 and 2019 respectively. She is the recipient of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award and NASA Early Career Faculty Award.
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