Potential NASA commercial applications include plume-surface interaction effects analysis to support NASA and industry led lunar and Mars lander development projects. Human class Mars lander plume-surface interaction has been identified as high risk by the Entry, Descent, Landing and Ascent (EDL&A) systems integration teams. Lunar lander customers range from current small commercial landers under the CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) program, follow-on mid-size landers, to the now high priority Human Lander System (HLS).
Potential non-NASA applications include a wide range of sand and dust related military and civilian applications such as rotorcraft sand/dust brownout and engine dust ingestion. In addition, gas-granular flows occur in many applications in petro-chemical and fossil-energy conversion industries where accurate granular modeling plays a huge role in the flow behavior of real particulate systems.
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