Space Exploration – Building the Space Launch System Booster Separation Database
NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) is an advanced launch vehicle being designed for a new era of human exploration beyond Earth's orbit, able to carry astronauts on missions to asteroids and eventually to Mars. The SLS configuration consists of a center core and two solid rocket boosters (SRBs), which separate from the core when their fuel is exhausted two minutes after liftoff. To better understand the critical aerodynamic forces that occur during flight and how these forces might impact the path of the SRBs away from the core during separation, researchers used NASA supercomputing resources to create an aerodynamic database to validate the design of the vehicle's booster-separation system. This new database will be used by the Guidance, Navigation, and Control group at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center to ensure that the boosters can separate successfully without recontacting the core under all possible flight conditions.
Developing this database was easily one of the most computationally intensive projects that I have ever worked on. The sheer number of variables required tens of thousands of simulations in order to accurately predict the aerodynamics during the SLS booster separation event.
Stuart Rogers, aerospace engineer, NASA Advanced Supercomputing Facility, NASA Ames Research Center
Quick Facts
- The team at NASA Ames Research Center developed the most complex computational fluid dynamics-based aerodynamic database in the SLS program, running more than 22,000 Cart3D and 390 OVERFLOW simulations on the Pleiades supercomputer over a period of two months.
- The database covers eight independent variables, including booster translation and rotation variables, free-stream angle of attack, angle of side-slip, and the relative thrust of the 16 booster-separation motors.
- Separate sets of computations were also run to simulate the possible effects caused by one of the core-stage RS-25 engines failing.
- Over 12.7 million core hours on Pleiades’ 24-core Intel Xeon “Haswell” nodes and 50 terabytes of short-term disk storage were required to complete this work.
Key Image
Image Caption
Space Launch System (SLS) booster separation flow field: isosurfaces of density (colored by pressure) illustrate a shock wave on the front of the vehicle; isosurfaces of plume-gas species (colored by Mach number) show the booster separation-motor plumes. Vehicle surface is colored by pressure. Stuart Rogers, NASA/Ames; Ryan Rocha, University of California, DavisDownload High-Res Image
Contacts
Stuart E. Rogers, NASA Ames Research Centerstuart.e.rogers@nasa.gov