CFD—Mature Technology for Space Exploration Mission Support?

Abstract

With the maturation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technology and staggering advances in supercomputing capability, parallel CFD applications are becoming increasingly vital and cost-effective for the design and analysis of spaceflight vehicles and related launch operations. A brief summary of progress in parallel CFD is presented in this paper along with a discussion of some of the most pacing challenges to be overcome, especially for space exploration applications.