Ablative Thermal Response Analysis Using the Finite Element Method

A review of the classic techniques used to solve ablative thermal response problems is presented. The advantages and disadvantages of both the finite element and finite difference methods are described. As a first step in developing a three-dimensional finite element based ablative thermal response capability, a one-dimensional computer tool has been developed. The finite element method is used to discretize the governing differential equations and Galerkin's method of weighted residuals is used to derive the element equations. A code-to-code comparison between the current one-dimensional finite element tool and the one-dimensional Fully Implicit Ablation and Thermal response program (FIAT), a NASA-standard finite difference tool, has been performed. In addition, the three-dimensional computer tool has been developed and preliminary results from the three-dimensional tool are presented.