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  • von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics

    Education in Research through Research


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  • von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics

    Education in Research through Research


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  • von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics

    Education in Research through Research


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  • von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics

    Education in Research through Research


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  • von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics

    Education in Research through Research


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Since 2007, ERC grants are awarded through open competition to projects headed by starting and established researchers. In 2010, Thierry Magin, associate professor in the AR Department, has been awarded a €1.5 million individual ERC Starting Grant for building a research team to work on the AEROSPACEPHYS project: “Multiphysics models and simulations for reacting and plasma flows applied to the space exploration program.” The prestigious ERC grant catalyzed scientific and academic collaborations with external institutions crucial to the project. In particular, the principal investigator has been appointed at Ecole Centrale Paris and the University of Liège, where his PhD students have the possibility to register in the doctoral school of these institutions. During the first phase of this five-year project, the AEROSPACEPHYS team was composed of the principal investigator, two PhD students and two postdocs, reinforced by three PhD students sponsored by Belgian funding agencies and VKI. Several research master students and one collaborative PhD student were also integrated into the research group that has reached today its critical mass to start with the second phase of the project.

Thierry Magin Current and past team members
The principal investigator: Prof. Thierry Magin Current and past team members: (left to right) Bernd Helber,
Alessandro Munafó, Thierry Magin, Erik Torres, J.B. Scoggins, Pierre Schrooyen, Alessandro Turchi, and (not pictured) Michael Kapper, Julien de Mûelenaere, Olaf Marxen, Gennaro Serino, Gilles Bailet, Georgios Bellas Chatzigeorgis.

Space exploration is one of the boldest and most exciting endeavors that humanity has undertaken and holds enormous promise for the future. After the successful manned missions to the Moon and many probe entries into the atmosphere of outer planets, our next challenges include bringing back samples to Earth by means of robotic missions, as well as continuing the manned exploration program to send human beings to Mars and bring them safely home. Inaccurate prediction of the heat load on the surface of a spacecraft may be fatal for the crew or the success of robotic missions. Rocket scientists estimate this quantity during the design phase for the heat shield used to protect payload and astronauts. To help them with this estimation, the team is investigating the following aerospace mission killers:

  • Radiation of the hot dissociated plasma in front of the vehicle,
  • Complex degradation, or ablation, of the thermal protection material,
  • Flow transition from laminar regime to turbulent regime.

A poor understanding of the coupling between the radiation, ablation, and transition phenomena can lead to severe errors in the heat load prediction.

Example of complex multiphysicsExample of complex multiphysics coupling during the entry of the Mars Science Laboratory into the Martian atmosphere (artistic view courtesy NASA): surface roughness on a thermal protection material can trigger laminar-turbulent transition (larger convective heat-flux) while the boundary layer can absorb radiation (lower radiative heat-flux).

To avoid space mission failure and ensure safety of the astronauts and payload, aerospace engineers resort to safety factors by increasing the heat shield thickness at the expense of reduced mass of the embarked payload. Determination of safety factors relies on a discipline called uncertainty quantification that aims here at developing rigorous methods to characterize the impact of “limited knowledge” on the heat load. The design of the Apollo, Galileo and Huygens probes are famous examples of “lucky” heat shield design with an insufficient safety factor. A possible explanation is that the conventional physico-chemical models used for entry simulations are often stretched dangerously and used out of the validity range for which they have been conceived. Thinking out of the box and basic research are thus necessary for advancements of the models that will define the environment and requirements for the design and safe operation of tomorrow’s space vehicles and planetary probes for the manned space exploration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Complementary toolsExample of complementary tools used for engineering prediction: kinetic theory models for transport phenomena / simulation of temperature field in inductive plasma flow / heat-flux measurement in VKI Plasmatron facility