Evaluation of radiative heat transfer for interplanetary re-entry under vibrational nonequilibrium conditions

A radiative heat transfer code, based on the Discrete Transfer method, is used in combination with a spectral radiative database and a thermochemical nonequilibrium Navier–Stokes flowfield solver, to compute radiative heating under vibrational nonequilibrium conditions for the re-entry test vehicle FIRE II. The trajectory point under scrutiny refers to a flight velocity of 8.3 km/s, where radiative equilibrium prevails. Numerical predictions indicate a quite good agreement with experimental data, both for the radiative intensity along the stagnation streamline and for the total (convective plus absorbed radiative) heat flux at the stagnation point. The Discrete Transfer method makes the code applicable to arbitrarily complex geometries, and the vibrational nonequilibrium description allows considering re-entry from lunar or interplanetary return trajectories, as well as from terrestrial orbits.