Michael Tonks
University of Florida
ESI 2017 Quad Chart Michael Tonks
The project goal is to develop a state-of-the-art quantitative tool to predict the performance of Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA) thermal protection systems (TPS) at the mesoscale. The tool will also predict the evolution of the thermomechanical properties of the material during operation. It will employ the phase field method coupled with heat conduction and solid mechanics and will be developed using the open source Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE). Our tool will be used to investigate the impact of PICA microstructure on TPS performance, providing results to inform the development of more mechanistic materials models for macroscale TPS codes. The physical models and parameters required by the mesoscale tool will be provided by a judicious combination of experimental data and atomic-level simulations.