Doing the Heavy Lifting in Space
The individual record for pulling an aircraft was set by Canada's Randy Fast in September 2009—Fast dragged a large military transport vehicle weighing 416,299 pounds a distance of 28 feet, 10.46 inches. With a little boost from NASA, he could make it another 1,169,324,611 feet or so by 2020.
Mach contours showing plume-induced flow separation after solid rocket booster separation at high altitude.
That's the year NASA plans the first crewed lunar trip for the Ares V Cargo Launch Vehicle (CLV)—the "heavy-lifter" of the U.S. space agency's next-generation space vehicles. The CLV will carry nearly 157,000 pounds of food, water, and scientific payloads 238,857 miles to the Moon.
Using NASA high-end computers and state-of-the-art software, scientists in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) across the Agency are producing high-fidelity aerodynamic simulations to assist in designing the two-stage, vertically stacked Ares V. Results from CFD analyses of the forces on the complete vehicle during its ascent trajectory will be used by multiple NASA teams across the country involved in the CLV's next design cycle.
"Being able to model such a complex vehicle—taking it from simplistic model to realistic flight vehicle—is a very exciting experience for the science and engineering community," said Cetin Kiris, who leads the Ares V CFD team and is chief of the Applied Modeling and Simulation Branch in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
Kiris' modeling and simulation work includes investigation and prediction of the possible effects of Plume Induced Flow Separation (PIFS) on Ares V. PIFS is a phenomenon in which the rocket plume expansion widens at higher altitudes, causing the airflow around the vehicle to broaden and separate away from the surface. This flow separation can then produce recirculation regions that draw the hot plume further up the vehicle, with a potential for dangerous overheating.
"These important computations are only made possible by the availabilty of modern supercomputing resources with very large memory and disk-space capacity," Kiris added. The NAS facility's Pleiades and Columbia supercomputers, along with state-of-the-art techniques such as Image Based Flow Visualization, have been used to produce a variety of informative images and movies showing the effects of various flow phenomena on the vehicle.
While NASA has focused on refining the vehicle's design through studies by the Ares CFD team, the Agency has also begun a series of discussions about the exciting new opportunities for carrying scientific payloads in astronomy, planetary science, and other important mission areas—which will lead to new discoveries for decades to come.
More information:
+ CFD Analysis for the Next-Generation Heavy-Lift Vehicle (PDF-524 KB)
Contact information:
Cetin Kiris
Applied Modeling and Simulation Branch Chief
NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division
Office: 650-604-4485
Cetin.C.Kiris@nasa.gov
