Two-way strongly coupled thermo-mechanical solver for ablation problems

A two-way strongly coupled solver has been developed to investigate the effects of geometry deformation, thermal strain and internal pressure field on TPS material. An unified finite-volume framework including moving mesh scheme is used to solve the governing equations. Verification test-cases are conducted to test the implementation of the cou­pling scheme. Thermal strain and deformation of the TPS material and its impacts on key parameters are studied. A test case is used to observe the effects of thermal stress and internal pressure. Finally, an iso-Q sample is used to demonstrate this behavior on a realistic geometry. The strongly coupled results show that, under certain conditions, the thermal strain should not be ignored. Local strains are significant enough to alter the material properties with more than 10 percent. Moreover, the thermal expansion may also result in changes in the conductivity and temperature distribution. The iso-Q results demonstrate that the thermal expansion can cause the formation of a “lip” which can eventually peel off on the TPS material.