A general ablation model for composites based on a coupled direct simulation Monte Carlo and mass-consistent marching cubes approach

A general ablation model based on a coupled direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) and mass-consistent marching cubes (MCMC) approach is presented. MCMC is a novel surface reconstruction algorithm that ensures consistency between the simulated surface recession rate and mass flux. The DSMC-MCMC ablation framework has also been expanded for composites by allowing for unique per-grid-point mass densities and per-cell surface reaction sets. A carbon–carbon composite composed of a square array of cylinders embedded in a matrix is ablated. For a sufficiently high reaction probability on the fiber surface, a counter-intuitive behavior is observed where high pore velocities coincide with reduced permeability and slower ablation. The DSMC-MCMC method is also applied to a more realistic thermal protection system sample which is generated from a tomographic scan.