Metallic thermal protection system design for aerospace structures

Abstract This paper is concerned with basic requirements, thermomechanical and thermochemical environment during re-entry, design evolution, engineering aspects and manufacturing problems of metallic multiwall thermal protection systems (multiwall TPS). In particular, the synthesis of past and new experience with metallic TPS development is described and various TPS candidates are briefly compared. Typical development tasks in terms of design, construction, testing/qualification, and manufacture are discussed and the essentials are summarized. Where relevant, typical differences with fully ceramic TPS concepts are mentioned.