Masters Theses

Date of Award

6-1987

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Aerospace Engineering

Major Professor

Frank G. Collins

Committee Members

Roy Schulz, Bazil Antar

Abstract

The electric arc heater was used to provide required enthalpy-pressure environments for testing the reentry thermal proctection system and for the development and evaluation of missiles nosetip material. However, the arc within the arc heater often generate a "'kink" force driving the arc toward the wall. Therefore, swirling flow was introduced into the arc heater flowfield to stabilize the "kink" force, and analytical modeling of arc heater was greatly needed to determine an improved configuration for a swirl-stabilized arc heater.

A water tunnel study was initiated by Arvin-Calspan; AEDC to study the complex flowfield that exists within the arc heater. It was the objective of the present work to prepare and apply a numerical computational fluid dynamics model of the mean steady flow in the water tunnel model for a given geometry. An existing full Navier-Stokes computer code for axisymmetry internal flows was modified for this purpose.

The numerical model examined the variation of various parameters that were controlling the flowfield. The pressure variation across various cross sections in the arc heater were analysed to see the stability of the arc. Streamlines and vorticity were determined, and separation points and reattachment points inside the arc heater were located. The numerical code, however, could not address any unsteadiness of the core vortex flow.

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