Numerical Methodologies for Magnetohydrodynamic Flow Control for Hypersonic Vehicles

The concept of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow control is of current interest for its applications in spacecraft reentry and aerodynamic control for hypersonic vehicles. This work presents an efficient approach for realistically simulating MHD effects in weakly ionised plasmas produced by hypersonic flows. The governing equations consists of the full Navier-Stokes resistive-MHD system under the low magnetic Reynold’s number assumption. The numerical approach employs a Cartesian mesh which facilitates hierarchical adaptive mesh refinement in a highly parallelised framework. Geometry is implemented via a rigid-body Ghost Fluid Method which permits arbitrarily complex embedded boundaries. An advanced 19-species equilibrium air-plasma equation of state (plasma19) has been adopted and extended in this work, for the study of test cases where the assumption of local thermodynamic equilibrium applies. The numerical methodology paired with plasma19 equation of state is shown to effectively capture boundary-layer shock wave interactions in a complex double-cone flow, with imposed magnetic field. The model predicts MHD flow control (augmented shock position) in line with experimental measurements, improving upon previous model predictions.KeywordsComputational physicsHypersonicsMagnetohydrodynamicsFlow control