Reduced-Order Modeling Approach to Blunt-Body Aerodynamic Modeling

Blunt-body entry vehicles induce complex flow phenomena that result in dynamic instabilities in the low supersonic to transonic flight regime. Dynamic stability coefficients are typically calculated through parameter identification and trajectory regression techniques using both physical test data and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The objective of this work is to advance the quantification of the dynamic stability behavior of blunt-body entry vehicles by leveraging high-fidelity CFD data through reduced-order modeling (ROM). ROMs are capable of leveraging high-fidelity aerodynamic data in a cost-effective manner by finding a low-dimensional representation of the full-order model. ROMs based on proper orthogonal decomposition have shown success in recreating CFD analyses of parametric ROM applications and time-varying ROM applications. Results of this research demonstrated success in constructing two ROMs of a blunt-body entry vehicle to recreate heatshield and backshell pressure distributions from forced oscillation trajectories. The ROM was more successful at reconstructing the heatshield pressure distribution, with challenges arising in predicting the chaotic response of backshell latent coordinates.