Conveners
Plasma facilities, simulations and diagnostics
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Plasma facilities, simulations and diagnostics
- Brett Cruden (AMA Inc/NASA Ames)
Background of the study: To prevent damage to a re-entry vehicle, its windward side must be protected by a heat shield made from advanced thermal protection materials (TPMs). In-flight testing of new TPMs is prohibitively expensive, so the extreme heat experienced during hypersonic re-entry is simulated by exposing a TPM sample to a hot plasma jet. Inductively coupled plasma (ICP)...
The calculation of reactive flows such as those found in hypersonics, combustion, laser-plasma interactions and gas discharges requires a theoretical framework encompassing non-equilibrium thermodynamics, transport, collisional and radiative kinetics as well as gas-surface
interactions and electromagnetics. In many situations the multi-component working fluid may be viewed as a collection of...
Plasma wind tunnels are fundamental assets when designing Thermal Protection Systems (TPS) for re-entry capsules or the demise process of Space Debris (SD) subjected to uncontrolled atmospheric re-entry. In ground, thermal and momentum variables such as enthalpy, pressure and velocity must be accurately measured to reproduce the aerothermochemical environment of the hypersonic flow experienced...
At the Institute of Space Systems (IRS) of the University of Stuttgart three plasma wind tunnels (PWK1, PWK3, PWK4) are operated to experimentally simulate spacecraft entry into a large variety of atmospheres. In this work, the facilities PWK1 and PWK3 are used to study plasma emission relevant for Mars entry and hyperbolic Earth entry, respectively. In both scenarios, radiative heat flux...
In this work, we examine the use of an in-house developed slug calorimeter in the 350 kW inductively coupled plasma (ICP) wind tunnel at the Plasmatron X facility, developed by the Center for Hypersonics & Entry System Studies (CHESS) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Plasmatron X is currently the largest ICP facility in the United States, which allows near-continuous operation,...
Background
The state of the boundary layer has a large role in the investigation of high-speed flow fields for aerospace applications. A turbulent boundary layer causes heat flux on the surface of a hypersonic vehicle to dramatically increase when compared to the laminar case. Performance is also impacted by boundary layer turbulence due to increased skin friction drag, and...
Background of the study
According to the recent paper of Asokakumar Sreekala et al. [1], the discrepancy between Navier Stokes Fourier-based Computational Fluid Dynamics and aero thermodynamic flight test data becomes noticeable from altitudes above 50 km. These researchers argue that bulk viscosity (BV) is required to complete the Navier-Fourier model and that the effect of vibrational...
In the plasma wind tunnel facilities PWK1/2 and PWK4 of the Institute of Space Systems, the high-enthalpy flow field is generated using electric arc-jet generators. A sample positioned downstream of the nozzle is thus exposed to a combination of radiative, convective, and chemical heating from the plasma flow, but potentially also from radiation originating from the generator. Assessing the...
