COMBUSTION RESEARCH & FLOW TECHNOLOGY INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: Characteristics of missile plume UV/Visible emissions & RCS have a great potential to

Description

Characteristics of missile plume UV/Visible emissions & RCS have a great potential to enhance defensive capabilities in several areas related to Ballistic Missile Defense Systems (BMDS). Supporting MDA"s engineering applications related to missile typing, discrimination, tracking, algorithm development, etc. requires estimation of many parameters by the plume models, which can be very expensive for complex targets that are not easily measured. High-fidelity, 3D plume modeling of threat systems is now at an advanced stage, utilizing a MDA-sponsored highly efficient, 3D CFD plume models except for a class of systems that exhibit a unique behavior of the plume flame structure and infra-red (IR) emissions during afterburning shutdown or cessation. This class of systems exhibit very rapid afterburning shutdown that is difficult to accurately predict with current modeling approaches. Under the proposed effort, an Afterburning Shutdown Model will be developed and validated for accurately simulating the characteristics of a wide class of systems spanning amine fuels, liquid hydrocarbon fuels, conventional solid propellants, etc., as well as both small and larger thrust systems. These next-generation capabilities will be implemented within the MDA/DESL RPFM2D/RPFM3D plume simulation tools that will facilitate plume EO-RCS data fusion by employing the same RPFM plume flowfield prediction.