Surface thermochemical effects on TPS-coupled aerothermodynamics in hypersonic Martian gas flow

This paper deals with the surface thermochemical effects on TPS-coupled aerothermodynamics in hypersonic Martian gas flow. An interface condition with finite-rate thermochemistry was established to balance the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes solver and TPS thermal response solver, and a series of coupled simulations of chemical non-equilibrium aerothermodynamics and structure heat transfer with various surface catalycities were performed for hypersonic Mars entries. The analysis of surface thermochemistry reveals that the surface chemical reactions have great contribution to aerodynamic heating, and the temperature-dependence of finite-rate catalysis highly influences the evolution of the coupling aerodynamic heating in the coupling process. For fixed free stream parameters with proper catalytic excitation energy, a “leap” phenomenon of the TPS-coupled heat flux with the coupling time appears in the initial stage of the coupling process, due to the strong thermochemical effects on the TPS surface. •Finite-rate chemistry interface condition was modeled to balance NS & TPS solvers.•Proper catalytic excitation energy leads to limited leap of wall heatflux with time.•Temperature-dependence of finite-rate catalysis highly affects coupling evolution.•Wall thermochemical effects are important to aeroheating evaluation and TPS design.