Hypersonic flows encountered during atmospheric re-entry and high-speed 
aerospace operations demand robust CFD techniques. Under these extreme 
conditions, chemical non-equilibrium and thermochemical non-equilibrium effects 
arise due to dissociation, ionization, and vibrational-electronic energy 
exchanges among multiple species and energy modes. Traditional CFD solvers that 
assume equilibrium conditions cannot accurately capture these complex physical 
phenomena.

The in-house entropy-stable Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) solver has demonstrated 
excellent accuracy and stability for single-species flow simulations in a broad 
range of Mach number flows. However, to extend its applicability to non-
equilibrium hypersonic regimes, we must incorporate multi-species and multi-
temperature modeling capabilities that account for high-temperature chemical 
reactions and inter-modal energy transfer.

This project aims to extend the existing SSDC solver to accurately simulate 
chemical non-equilibrium and thermochemical non-equilibrium flows.

We are seeking M.Sc. and/or Ph.D. students who have not yet received their 
degrees. 

Prerequisites:

- At least basic programming skills and an interest to become better. Ideally, 
in C, Fortran, and Python.

- Understanding of the compressible Navier–Stokes equations and fundamentals of 
high-speed flows is highly desirable.

- Prior coursework or hands-on work in numerical methods and CFD is an 
advantage, although not strictly mandatory.

- Comfort with a Linux-based environment for software development, debugging, 
and potentially high-performance computing is beneficial.