Heat transfer in ultra-high temperature advanced ceramics under high enthalpy arc-jet conditions
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HEAT AND MASS TRANSFER, vol.91, pp.747-755, 2015 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
- Publication Type: Article / Article
- Volume: 91
- Publication Date: 2015
- Doi Number: 10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2015.08.029
- Journal Name: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HEAT AND MASS TRANSFER
- Journal Indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus
- Page Numbers: pp.747-755
- Keywords: Hypersonic flow, Plasma wind tunnel, UHTC, VEHICLE, NOSECAP, FLOW
- Middle East Technical University Affiliated: No
Abstract
Aim of this work is to analyze the response of an ultra-high temperature ceramic at typical heat flux conditions of thermal protection systems of a re-entry spacecraft. In particular, a ZrB2-SiC based ultra-high temperature advanced ceramic sharp leading edge demonstrator (1 mm nominal radius of curvature) was manufactured and tested in a non-equilibrium high enthalpy supersonic airflow, 20 MJ/kg of peak total enthalpy, by using an arc-jet ground facility. The surface temperature of the leading edge was monitored by infrared thermo-cameras coupled to a two-color pyrometer. The ultra-refractory advanced ceramic leading edge withstood stressful thermo-chemical loads successfully, without obvious failure. Ad-hoc computational fluid dynamics simulations rebuilt the adopted set-up and related experiment conditions: the numerical outputs matched fairly well the experimental in-situ determinations. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.