JEDI Center supports aerodynamic design of Advanced Solid Rocket by using cutting edge simulation technologies

JAXA utilizes CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) technology, which simulates air flow using the supercomputer, in order to shorten time for experiments or to omit some kinds of experiments in spacecraft (including rocket) aerodynamic design. However, the aerodynamic/fluid analysis with conventional methods takes time and it was the bottleneck in spacecraft design process. Therefore, JEDI (JAXA's Engineering Digital Innovation) Center is conducting research and development (R & D) of CFD Solver "LS-Flow" and computational Grid Automatic Generation Tool "LS-Grid" as new technologies of CFD, in order to dramatically reduce the time for spacecraft design. And now, we are applying these technologies to various aerodynamic design supports, such as Advanced Solid Rocket (nickname: Epsilon Rocket).

We confirmed that CFD analysis results and wind tunnel testing results were in good agreement. Then, as the CFD results were validated, we acquired numerical data which we never get from experiments (e.g., normal force). Our cutting edge CFD contributes to the Advanced Solid Rocket Project by providing them with those data.

"LS-Flow"　Arbitrary Unstructured, Compressible CFD Solver

• SLAU flux and Preconditioning: Low speed flow computation capability that is not covered by conventional compressible CFD solvers
• GLSQ (Green-Gauss based Least Squares): Accurate and monotone gradient computations
• DES, DDES: Unsteady turbulent flow computations
• Moving Grid Method: Coupling computations of moving body and unsteady fluid motions
• JSS (JAXA's Supercomputer System): Massively parallel computations
• Joint work with Prof. Z.J. Wang at Iowa State Univ.

"LS-Flow"　Arbitrary Unstructured, Compressible CFD Solver

• Accurate representation of complex body geometries: Preserving lines that form a threshold edge angle (Feature Line Preservation technique)
• Efficient grid generation: Approx. 20 times faster than a conventional multi-block structured grid approach
• Joint work with Prof. Z.J. Wang at Iowa State Univ.