Plasma-Radiofrequency Interactions Around Atmospheric Re-Entry Vehicles: Modelling and Arc-Jet Simulation

Abstract

An aero-thermo-chemical model is developed to simulate the flowfield, including ionization, around atmospheric re-entry configurations, and its interactions with radio-frequency communication signals (e.g. GPS). The model is successfully validated against literature in-flight measurements of the electron number density, and then applied to the re-entry of recently proposed concepts of slender configurations. The advantages of using sharp and slender geometries for re-entry applications, with respect to radio communication problems, are analyzed and discussed.