Validation and enhancement of aerodynamic heating method with computational fluid dynamics and Newtonian cooling

An efficient and accurate aerodynamic heating analysis method is critical for thermal protection system (TPS) design in hypersonic vehicles. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) coupled Newtonian cooling (NC) framework, which was proposed to predict aerothermal and drive thermal conduction efficiently, is first validated on four representative hypersonic configurations, covering flow complexities from axisymmetric bow shocks to shock/shock interactions. Compared with high-fidelity CFD coupled computational thermal dynamics, the CFD/NC approach maintains structural temperature response prediction errors at corresponding nodes within 5% while significantly reducing computational cost, especially for the three-dimensional cases. Moreover, a segmented coupling strategy (SCS) is proposed, which periodically updates heat transfer coefficients with CFD data, thereby extending the robustness and applicability of the CFD/NC approach to long-duration cases. This study advances the CFD/NC framework by providing systematic validation on diverse hypersonic configurations and by introducing SCS that extends its reliability for long-duration heating. These developments yield a balanced and scalable approach for rapid TPS design optimization and also offer potential for integration into aerothermoelastic analyses of hypersonic aircraft.