Radiation transport around axisymmetric blunt body vehicles using a modified differential approximation

A moment method for computing 3-D radiative transport is applied to axisymmetric flows in thermochemical nonequilibrium. Such flows are representative of proposed aerobrake missions. The method uses the P-1 approximation to reduce the governing system of integro-differential equations to a coupled set of partial differential equations. A numerical solution method for these equations given actual variations of the radiation properties in thermochemical nonequilibrium blunt body flows is developed. Initial results from the method are shown and compared to tangent slab calculations. The agreement between the transport methods is found to be about 10~percent in the stagnation region, with the difference increasing along the flank of the vehicle.