Development of stochastic model for fibrous ablators

Fibrous ablators have been used as thermal protection systems for many atmospheric entry missions. Current material response codes use monolithic bulk properties as input. However, the materials are not homogeneous at the mesoscale and thus experimental performance shows scatter around material response predictions. This scatter necessitates the use of a distribution of properties as an input. The proper distribution must be found and to do so a code must be developed to create thousands of model representative volume elements (mRVEs). An existing stochastic structure generation code, OTTER, has been expanded to include these materials. These mRVEs have been shown to capture both the porosity and fiber orientation of FiberForm^Ⓡ .