A novel non-ablative thermal protection system with combined spike and opposing jet concept

• Published in: Acta astronautica Vol. 159; pp. 41 - 48
• Main Authors: Huang, Jie, Yao, Wei-Xing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elmsford Elsevier Ltd 01.06.2019; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Ablation; Aerodynamic heating; Capital costs; Efficiency; Feasibility studies; Hypersonic; Hypersonic vehicles; Jet; Jets; Non-ablative; Numerical methods; Reduction; Spike; Thermal protection; Thermal protection system; Spike; Jet; Hypersonic; Thermal protection system; Non-ablative
• ISSN: 0094-5765; 1879-2030
• DOI: 10.1016/j.actaastro.2019.02.005

In order to reduce the aerodynamic heating of the hypersonic vehicles, a combined non-ablative thermal protection system (CNA-TPS) is proposed in this paper, which consists of the blunt body, the spike, the front and rear jets. The heat reduction efficiency is studied by the CFD numerical method. The results show that the heat reduction efficiency of CNA-TPS is better than the other configurations, which verifies the advantage of the CNA-TPS. In addition, the effect of length of the spike, total pressure ratios and sizes of the front and rear jets are studied. The results show that the heat reduction efficiency of CNA-TPS increases with the increase of length of the spike, total pressure ratios and sizes of the front and rear jets. The improving rate of the heat reduction efficiency gradually decreases with the increase of length of the spike and total pressure ratios of the front and rear jets. The investigations in this paper show the feasibility and advantage of CNA-TPS in the future engineering applications. •A combined non-ablative thermal protection system is proposed.•CFD method is adopted to analyze heat reduction efficiency.•Flow characteristics of CNA-TPS are studied.•Heat reduction efficiency of CNA-TPS is compared.•Influence factors of CNA-TPS are studied.