Margot GUIHO, Philippe GRENARD
DOI Number: N/A
Conference number: HiSST-2025-294
The accurate simulation of mobile components in hypersonic vehicles presents major challenges, particularly during critical flight phases involving geometric reconfigurations—such as control surface deflection, nozzle vectoring, or stage separation. At these speeds, aerodynamic and mechanical response times may become comparable, requiring fully dynamic computations that go beyond quasi-static assumptions. To address these challenges, two dynamic mesh modules have been developed within the ONERA CEDRE simulation framework. The mesh intersection module enables robust and fully parallel computation of overlapping moving geometries. In realistic use cases such as the Ariane 64 lift-off configuration, this module was shown to handle approximately 100,000 intersection problems per time step over one million time steps—representing 100 billion elementary computations—without performance degradation. The mesh displacement module incorporates mechanical joints into the simulation, accounting for load transfer and kinematic constraints between moving parts. Eleven standardized joint types were implemented, with support for joint limits and failure modeling in simple configurations. Elementary test
cases validated the robustness of the approach, even for over-constrained (hyperstatic) assemblies. These tools were successfully applied to a realistic launcher scenario and are adaptable to a wide range of configurations involving transient motion, such as fin deployment or launcher touchdown. Future developments will include modeling of contact, friction, rebound, and technological joints such as springs and dampers.