Pixel reconstruction-based optical transmission simulation method in hypersonic environment

In the hypersonic environment, the highly compressed and rapidly dynamic flow field significantly impacts optical transmission performance. The aero-optical numerical simulation method, such as ray tracing algorithm, can simulate the optical transmission path of light in hypersonic environments. Different from previous study that treated the flow field simulation as discrete data nodes and calculated optical path using the empirical fixed step sizes, this study introduces a Pixel Reconstruction based Flow Field Image Layers(PR-FFIL) simulation method. It reconstructs the discrete flow field data nodes into pixel, and interpolation is carried out individually in each pixel area. The PR-FFIL encapsulates data from flow field nodes as information within pixel regions. This approach not only aligns more closely with the physical characteristics of the flow field but also reduces the repeated calls to interpolation algorithms within the same pixel, thereby enhancing efficiency. Based on reconstructed pixels, the PR-FFIL iteratively solves the ray tracing step sizes and provides the range of adaptive step sizes. It more flexibly handles simulated flow fields with different accuracies and enables precision up to 0.0001mm. After processing the pixelated flow field image, the PR-FFIL layers flow field image to achieve adaptive step size for ray tracing. By employing PR-FFIL to perform ray tracing in the standard and more refined simulated flow field, the computational efficiency increases to 2.1859 and 2.7082 times compared to using traditional methods respectively, without sacrificing computational accuracy. Therefore, the algorithm demonstrates further advantages when applied to finer flow field simulation and smaller step sizes