Numerical Assessment of Wall Catalytic Effects on the IXV Surface

The flow around the IXV vehicle during the atmospheric re-entry has been numerically studied using a commercial code in order to assess the wall catalycity effects on the surface heat flux. The study has been performed by means of the analysis and the comparison of the numer- ical solutions obtained applying the fully-, partial- and non-catalytic wall boundary conditions. The results show that at M = 17.7 the surface heat flux distribution depends strongly on the wall catalycity and that the numerical heat flux estimate can vary up to a factor 2 changing the wall catalytic model.