rd AIAAThermophysics Conference

This report provides an overview of the hypersonic aeroheating CFD research conducted at the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) in support of this TPS development activity. In this research, laminar and turbulent aeroheating predictions were generated at wind-tunnel test conditions for the X33 vehicle using both a finite-volume, Navier-Stokes solver, and a coupled inviscid-solver/boundary-layer-code engineering method. Computations were performed for angles-of-attack of 20, 30, and 40. Comparisons between the predictions and wind tunnel data for the centerline and axial heating distributions were generally within 10% for the Navier-Stokes method and 25% for the engineering code method. Aeroheating distributions were also computed for the peak heating point on the flight trajectory