A Numerical Technique for Modelling Hypersonic Inflatable Shields

                                
==Abstract==

This paper describes a recently developed numerical technique to simulate high-speed flows on complex 3D inflatable structures using tetrahedral volume grids. In detail, the proposed methodology is based on the front-tracking approach, as it involves the coupling between a shock-fitting technique and a non-linear structural solver: by doing so, we are able to exploit the well-known advantages of shock-fitting regarding the computation and modelling of gas-dynamic discontinuities to deal with fluid-structure interaction problems. More details about the proposed technique and some applications to inflatable structures in hypersonic flows are presented in this paper