Thermal Testing of Woven TPS Materials in Extreme Entry Environments

[摘要] NASAs future robotic missions to Venus and outer planets, namely, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, result inextremely high entry conditions that exceed the capabilities of current mid density ablators (PICA or Avcoat). Thereforemission planners assume the use of a fully dense carbon phenolic heatshield similar to what was flown on Pioneer Venusand Galileo. Carbon phenolic (CP) is a robust TPS however its high density and thermal conductivity constrain missionplanners to steep entries, high heat fluxes, high pressures and short entry durations, in order for CP to be feasible from amass perspective. In 2012 the Game Changing Development Program in NASAs Space Technology Mission Directoratefunded NASA ARC to investigate the feasibility of a Woven Thermal Protection System to meet the needs of NASAs mostchallenging entry missions. The high entry conditions pose certification challenges in existing ground based test facilities.Recent updates to NASAs IHF and AEDCs H3 high temperature arcjet test facilities enable higher heatflux (2000 Wcm2)and high pressure (5 atm) testing of TPS. Some recent thermal tests of woven TPS will be discussed in this paper. Theseupgrades have provided a way to test higher entry conditions of potential outer planet and Venus missions and provideda baseline against carbon phenolic material. The results of these tests have given preliminary insight to sampleconfiguration and physical recession profile characteristics.

[发布日期] 2014-06-16

[学科分类] 复合材料