Mixcoatl Software (Part 1): Coupled Thermal Physics and Mechanics for Efficient Engineering Design

As numerical methods and computational capacities improve, there is a greater ability to leverage more complicated physics for engineering design analyses. The primary objectives of this new modeling tool are to (1) implement medium-fidelity physics within a framework that allows for the combination of simplified modeling accuracy with detailed physics tools and (2) enable postprocessing analytics that reduce time to design. These types of tools are considered a requirement to ensure modern designs are not constrained by the tools themselves. One of the novel features of this software is flow searching, which simultaneously resolves the mesh and determines flow parameters that will allow for achieving either pressure equalization or isothermal exit conditions among user-defined groupings of channels. A space nuclear propulsion example using Mixcoatl^TM has been included to illustrate the use of this feature.