Aerothermal Database-In-The-Loop With POST2 Simulations

Aerothermal values are important metrics for aeroassist, entry, descent, and landing missions (AEDL). Frequently, AEDL flight mechanics simulations, such as the Program to Optimize Simulated Trajectories II (POST2), are utilized to produce aerothermal values for population of scorecards, histograms, and other performance deliverables. Similar to the interaction between aerodatabase and flight mechanics simulations, aerothermal deliveries to flight mechanics go through a process of checkouts to ensure proper implementation/utilization into the simulation. The current approach is to use either aerothermal heating indicators and/or analytical engineering models (e.g. Sutton-Graves). These are implemented in the POST2 simulation as generalized equations. The cur-rent approaches are sufficient for initial assessment of the aeroheating environment in trajectory studies and are computationally cheap. However more advanced capabilities maybe needed, which aim to increase the fidelity of the aerothermal results outputted from trajectory simulations.