Modeling UV/VIS/near-IR Observables of Dim Hypersonic Configurations

SBIR topic MDA27BZ02-DV004 (U.S. Department of Defense – Missile Defense Agency), Phase I and II. Open to U.S. small businesses. Opens: December 2, 2026. Closes: January 6, 2027. To address dim hypersonic threats in missile defense scenarios, the government desires to enhance current physical modeling tools with the ability to simultaneously predict at-source observable properties in the ultraviolet (UV), visible (VIS), and near-infrared (near-IR) spectral regimes that are founded and built upon Navier-Stokes Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) techniques and which accounts for, but is not limited to, vehicle surface heating and ablation, Arrhenius and collisional chemically reacting flows, non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) effects, boost and divert jet exhaust interactions with the hypersonic body flowfield, and electro-optical radiative transfer physics-based models. The modeling suite provided by the Joint Army-Navy-NASA Air Force (JANNAF) Exhaust Plume and Signatures Subcommittee (EPSS) [1-4] computes RF and certain IR observables. It is founded on CFD and DSMC flowfield codes, hardbody heating models, and radiative transfer / radar propagation techniques. However, the suite does not model all the underlying chemical and physical mechanisms needed to account for radiative emissions in the identified parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Phenomenologies that must be enhanced within or added to the suite include, but are not limited to: characterization of thermal protection system response, development of material degradation models, detailed Arrhenius and collisional chemical kinetics models that consistently apply across the continuum and rarefied regimes, and generation of molecular band models for UV, Visible, and near-IR radiative emission. The developed models should be compatible with the JANNAF suite infrastructure. And the resulting assemblage should be able to model realistic hypersonic…