The aim of this dissertation was to explore the possibility of using
flow control to stabilize re-entry flight at very high
angle-of-attack. This was carried out in three steps: 1) study the
structure of representative high angle-of-attack re-entry flows; 2)
develop a semi-empirical plasma actuator model that can be applied
to control high angle-of-attack re-entry flows; 3) application of
the plasma actuator model to study the control of representative
re-entry flows. The calculations include viscous and thermochemical
non-equilibrium effects, and a high-fidelity physical model to
resolve complex flow structure.
The contribution of this dissertation was to provide a detailed
description of hypersonic viscous flow around blunt-nosed elliptical
cone at very high angle-of-attack. High-fidelity, thermochemical
non-equilibrium numerical solutions of high angle-of-attack re-entry
flows were not published prior to this research, and thus this
research can provide a foundation to calculate, analyze, and
describe very high angle-of-attack hypersonic re-entry flows.
Paramount to this dissertation was the development of a new
phenomenological MHD plasma actuator model. A semi-empirical
actuator model was developed by adding source terms to the momentum
equation, vibrational energy equation, and total energy equation,
employing an exponential decay function based on the formulations of
Kalra et al. and Poggie. This new plasma actuator model was
extended from Poggie's model to include thermochemical
non-equilibrium effects and expanded from Kalra's et al.
two-dimensional model to include three-dimensional effects.
Development, validation, and calibration of the plasma actuator
model was based on a qualitative comparison to the experiment of
Kalra et al. on manipulating turbulent shock-wave/bounday layer
interaction using plasma actuators. The effect of the plasma
actuators on turbulent shock-wave/boundary-layer interaction was
simulated numerically and a detailed description of the complex flow
structure with and without actuation was provided.
Finally, application of the plasma actuators to control
the complex flow structure of high angle-of-attack re-entry flight
vehicles was investigated. To the best of the author's knowledge,
no prior research on high angle-of-attack re-entry vehicle control
using plasma actuators has been published. Lastly, this dissertation
serves as a foundation to compute, analyze, and control complex flow
generated around re-entry vehicles at high angle-of-attack.