Meteorite Reentry Melting and Fluid Flow

Upon entry into the earth atmosphere, meteorites experience extreme temperatures and heat fluxes. As a result, they are subject to variety of phase change phenomena including melting, evaporation, and sublimation, including chemical reactions such as charring and oxidation. Melting processes have the added complexity of surfaces changing shapes. These changed shapes in turn influence the melting properties of the meteorite. For example, a cylindrical object travelling alongside its centerline into an atmosphere will experience a axisymmetric change in its surface shape. Blunt objects upon entering the atmosphere experience a shock-wave. Behind the shockwave these surfaces are subject to extreme temperatures. As the flow goes around the object, the object experiences phase change resulting in the shape of the object changing. At the stagnation point/leading edge, melting rate is at its highest resulting in the highest rate of surface recession. However, such shape change will then might result in a sort of stread0steate shape that would cause a lateral translation of the surface. In this project an attempt will be made to model what kind of surface shapes are achieved under atmospheric entry.