Introduction

The Compressible-Flow CFD group is an informal group of academic staff postdoctoral fellows and postgraduate students within the Centre for Hypersonics. Our common interest is the simulation of hypersonic flows, in both the continuum and the rarefied flow regimes.

In support of the experimental activities of the Centre, special emphasis is placed on simulations of transient flows relevant to shock tunnel and expansion tube experiments. Computation is used for both the design of the experimental facilities themselves; the estimation of test-flow conditions in the expansion tubes, and the supporting analysis of data obtained from project-oriented experiments such as the MUSES-C aeroshell.

The group also undertakes a number of purely computational projects in which the computer plays the part of a "numerical wind tunnel". Such projects have included the calibration of a reentry air-data system, for the HYFLEX flight vehicle, the optimisation of scramjet exhaust nozzle shapes, and the analysis of the scramjet inlet and combustor for the HyShot project. Thes applied studies motivate more abstract modelling efforts that aim to improve our simulation capability by developing novel phenomonological flow models and numerical codes that implement those models.

Hypervelocity simulations pose a number of challenges to CFD codes: the fluid density can vary over several orders of magnitude, shocks are extremely strong, and the high temperatures existing behind the shocks lead to a strong coupling of aerothermodynamic and chemical effects. Specialised code development done within the group focuses on dealing with the extremes of hypervelocity flow as produced in the T4 shock tunnel and X-series expansion tube facilities. Locally developed simulation codes exist for: one-, two, and three-dimensional viscous flows; flows with equilibrium and nonequilibrium chemistry; and rarefied flows. See the Software Archive for further detail. These codes are tailored to our specific needs, provide capability that is not available in commercial CFD packages and form a training environment for the next generation of commercial code developers. An additional benefit to building our own software is that we find that the close interaction of CFD modellers and code writers with the experimenters leads us to look deeper into the modelling and instrumentation issues.

The inclusion of strongly interacting physical effects and large variations in length scales leads to the need to run our simulation codes on large, fast computers. The group presently has access to the University of Queensland's SGI Origin supercomputer, the national APAC facility and, for long-running jobs, our own Beowulf cluster based on a collection of Intel workstations and a very large SUN Cluster.

Compressible Flow CFD Group
Current members:
Peter A. Jacobs, Michael N. Macrossan,
Rowan J. Gollan, Michael Scott, Andrew Denman,
Joseph Tang, Todd Silvester, Adriaan Window, Brendan O'Flaherty

Centre for Hypersonics, School of Engineering
The University of Queensland
St Lucia, Qld 4072, AUSTRALIA

Past members and associates: Where are they now?
Joanna M. Austin, University of Illinois, Urbana
Kevin J. Austin, UQ, Brisbane
Russell Boyce, ADFA Canberra
Chris S. Craddock, WBM Pty Ltd, Brisbane
Michael Elford, HATCH, Brisbane
James M. Faddy, GALCIT, Pasadena
Tony Gardner, DLR, Göttingen
Richard J. Goozee, WBM Pty Ltd, Brisbane
Klaus Hannemann and Monika Hannemann, DLR, Göttingen
Haruko Ishikawa, Tokyo
Ian A. Johnston, DSTO, Adelaide
Charles Lilley, Hyshot, Brisbane
Andrew M. McGhee, RPM-Turbo
Paul J. Petrie-Repar, RPM-Turbo
Leon Prucha
Ben Stewart, ADFA Canberra, more recently Hong Kong
Tina Weichel, Germany
Michael Wendt, CSIRO, Brisbane
Vincent Wheatley, GALCIT, Pasadena