Loosely coupled analysis strategy for melt-ablation modeling of thermal protection material in supersonic gas-particle two-phase impingement flow

In this study, a two-way fluid-thermal-ablation loosely coupled analysis strategy is used to investigate the melt-ablation process of the copper specimen plate in the scaled ducted launcher. By coupling a discrete-phase model for simulate the supersonic gas-particle two-phase exhaust plume impingement flow field of a small scaled solid propellant rocket and a solidification/melting model for simulate the melt-ablation process of a copper specimen plate, the ablation depth profile of the copper specimen plate at a burn time of 3.6 s is successfully estimated. The numerical model is validated by experimental-scale test which shows that the simulation results using the two-way fluid-thermal-ablation loosely coupled analysis strategy can accurately predict the ablation depth profile of the copper specimen plate. •New loosely coupled method successfully predicts ablation depth profile.•Total computation time difference between two analysis strategies is tens of times.•The predicted depth is close to experimental depth (the max value of MAPE is 6.8%).