Numerical assessment of the flowfield features at the exit of Scirocco plasma wind tunnel nozzle

The simulation of the aerothermal environment that a space vehicle experiences during the atmospheric descent is mandatory for the design of thermal shields of re-entry vehicles. In this framework, both numerical and experimental design approaches, as computational fluid dynamics and plasma wind tunnel simulations, are fundamental. Numerical and engineering analyses of the non-equilibrium flow of Scirocco plasma wind tunnel nozzle, aimed to get test chamber predictions, are described in this paper. A data interpolation code, named SINDA, developed at CIRA in order to support the experimental test activities performed in Scirocco, is presented. SINDA is able to evaluate several flowfield features at the nozzle exit sections, starting only from a limited set of numerical rebuilding of facility tests and using a spline based algorithm. Comparisons between numerical data and SINDA results show good agreement between each other.