The Department of Defense (DOD) is seeking proposals for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I program. The specific topic of the solicitation is "Multicomponent Reduced Order Modeling of Hypersonic Boundary Layers". The Army branch is responsible for this topic, and the solicitation is open for the year 2024.
The objective of this research is to develop multi-physics component-based reduced order models (ROMs) and associated interfaces to accelerate high-fidelity design tools for predicting detailed time-accurate hypersonic vehicle flow-fields. The Army is interested in designing next-generation hypersonic flight vehicles with enhanced system speed, reach, and lethality. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has played a central role in the design and development of hypersonic vehicles, but existing approaches have prohibitive computational costs.
The goal of this research is to achieve at least an order of magnitude reduction in computational cost while recovering full Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) accuracy levels on transitional flows. The research should focus on developing scalable adaptive model order reduction technologies capable of handling realistic glide body, missile geometries, and scramjet propulsion systems for sustained powered flight in the Mach 6 to 20 range. The tools should also have the ability to be deployed in high-performance computing architectures efficiently and demonstrate efficient weak scaling.
The project will be conducted in two phases. Phase I involves developing component-based reduced order model (ROM) technologies that demonstrate accurate 3D high-fidelity prediction of transient hypersonic boundary layer flows. Phase II extends and validates the framework developed in Phase I to support hypersonic design of potential applications in air-breathing missiles, boost-glide missiles, and high-maneuver interceptors. The tools should demonstrate the ability to model complex aerothermochemistry, transport, thermoacoustics, shock-induced heating, and structural material responses with statistical properties shown to converge towards DNS and experimental data.
The developed tools will be validated through comparison with experiments, reference DNS databases, or data from the Army or DoD laboratories. The complete software package will be available to the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) for independent assessment and vetting. The ultimate goal is to integrate the developed tools into accelerated missile defense application pipelines and optimize them for real-world missile defense applications.
In summary, the DOD is seeking proposals for the development of reduced order modeling technologies for predicting hypersonic vehicle flow-fields. The research aims to achieve significant computational cost reduction while maintaining high-fidelity accuracy. The developed tools will have applications in hypersonic design for various missile systems and will be integrated into missile defense application pipelines.