Arc Heater Simulator (ARCHeS) Toolkit

The objective of this effort is to develop a realistic (high-fidelity) model for arc heaters to simulate the multi-physics in play in the operation of an ArcJet. The goal is to provide a theoretical basis for exploring various ideas to enhance the capacity of current facilities or designing new ones. The stretch goal is to have a computational toolkit with sufficient fidelity that enables a predictive capability for the maintenance schedule of the Ames ArcJet facility. There is no related supported effort, at the current time, within NASA for the US towards developing a modern modeling tool of extreme enthalpy arc heaters. Current modeling capability (ArcFlow) was developed in the late 60’s and early 70’s. ArcFlow is a parabolic solver of the governing equations that uses mixing length theory to model turbulence, tangent cylinder approximation to model radiative transfer with two or three bands approximation, and a simple Joule heating term to model the electric field. It is a model of the constrictor section of the arc heater, and does not include the electrode chambers. Current efforts in Japan and Korea have focused on incremental improvement to ArcFlow by using two-dimensional approximation to the governing equations and modern numerical tools. They have added a capability to simplistically model the anode and cathode chambers with crude models of the electric field. Attempts to obtain a code from Japan were not successful. More »