Conveners
Facilities
- Brett Cruden (AMA Inc/NASA Ames)
The VKI Plasmatron facility is the world’s largest Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) torch, providing a chemically pure plasma flow for material response studies in atmospheric entry conditions.
This paper presents the experimental investigation of the freestream plasma flow by means of optical emission spectroscopy in the UV to NIR wavelength region. We used a mixture of synthetic air and...
Abstract
With the advancement of technology comes opportunities to review current tools and methods to see how they can be improved. Optical emissions spectroscopy (OES) is a vital tool used on many facilities due to its non-intrusive nature. It is especially useful on hypersonic impulse test facilities such as shock tubes and expansion tubes as it allows for the chemical composition of the...
The study of the convective and radiative heat fluxes to the capsule surface during its atmospheric entry is critical for the design of the thermal protective system. For Mars entry scenarios, where CO2 represents 96% of the atmosphere, the radiative heat flux to the afterbody suffers from large uncertainties - up to 260%. The rapid hydrodynamic expansion of the plasma into the afterbody...
