Experimental Studies on Hypersonic Stagnation Point Chemical Environment

Abstract : Development of space transportation is a very challenging task. Hypersonic flight should be investigated in details to allow designing spacecraft according to the severe environment of their flight conditions. Typically during planetary re-entry, a strong bow shock takes place ahead of the vehicle detached from its nose. Across the shock a large amount of kinetic energy is converted into thermal energy. It results into a plasma flow which impinges on the vehicle wall. To sustain this important heat transfer the spacecraft must be equipped with suitable Thermal Protection System (TPS). Its role is essential, but its design is difficult due to the complexity of the heat-transfer phenomena. From this situation it could be understood that ground testing appear as a strong requirement for TPS design. However the development of high enthalpy facilities for hypersonic testing is a challenge in itself. When the investigations concern high temperature effects, and their consequences on TPS material, specific ground facilities have to be used allowing long time range and chemical reacting flows. Classically plasma wind tunnel are used: Arc-jet facilities in which supersonic testing in different configuration is available at very high power and very large scale, or Plasmatron facility offering usually a better chemical environment with subsonic testing. This lectures focus on this last type of facility and attends to present the use of such plasma wind tunnel to study the chemical environment of a re-entry flight as well as the catalytic properties of TPS material. It will deal with the methodology adapted for the Plasmatron testing, some aspects of the facility design, the development of the specific measurement techniques and the data processing in connection with appropriate CFD tools. It will finally concentrate on the application of this ground testing methodology to the determination of TPS properties in real flight conditions.

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