Uncertainty Quantification for Transient Thermal Management

Thermal resource management (TRM) of hypersonic vehicles has received considerable attention from the scientific community in the past few decades. A scramjet engine at hypersonic speed warrants stringent cooling requirements to manage its thermal load: therefore, heat dissipation of hypersonic vehicles remains a challenging research topic worthy of investigation. For this effort, quantification of the uncertainty in a transient heat rejection system is analyzed. The stochastic nature of the initial condition and heat rejection boundary condition is introduced to determine the temperature distribution in the system. Results are presented for the temperature variation as a result of uncertainties in the initial condition and Biot number at the boundary where heat is rejected. The terms that impact the overall uncertainty in the transient regions are investigated to determine the factors that have the greatest risk of exceeding known thermal management limitations.