Sharp Hot Structures: an Italian Technology Project aimed to Future Space Applications
- Paper number
IAC-07-C2.4.09
- Author
Dr. Giuliano Marino, CIRA Italian Aerospace Research Centre, Italy
- Coauthor
Dr. Roberto Gardi, CIRA Italian Aerospace Research Centre, Italy
- Year
2007
- Abstract
In the frame of the National Aerospace Research Program (PRO.R.A. USV), funded by the Italian Government, CIRA has been working for several years to the development of flying test beds in order to experimentally investigate, and then assess new technologies to support the access to the space. One of the key technologies that has been recognised as a promising step forward, in the field of the Materials \& Structures, is represented by innovative concepts of critical aerodynamic sub-components such as the nose-cap and wing leading edges for new generation of spacecrafts. The change in the design approach for those parts, mainly from blunt to sharp aerodynamic profiles, is expected to be very beneficial to the vehicle manoeuvrability, cross-range capability, and safety. On the other hand new class of materials, technological processes, mechanical interfaces, and design criteria must be conceived, analyzed, and tested in order to achieve items that are able to successfully survive to the relevant high heat fluxes generated at the stagnation point of its profiles. This paper deals with theoretical, numerical and experimental work that has been carried out so far to design, optimize, fabricate, and qualify on-ground, a full scale prototype of the nose-cap of the re-entry vehicle under development at CIRA. Besides the degree of innovation due to the materials selection that was essentially based on the so called Ultra High Temperature Ceramics (UHTC), other new technological solutions have been considered and implemented during the project evolution. Some of them covered design aspects and were motivated by the need to define and verify specific design criteria applicable to the materials selected, and also by the necessity to solve critical interface issues, considered the strong thermal and mechanical constrains. Additional remarkable topics that were investigated refer to the on-ground test qualification activities. Technical efforts were done to design the prototype test qualification campaign into the CIRA Plasma Wind Tunnel (SCIROCCO), consistently with the in-flight mission profile. It was not trivial to define the facility operational parameters and the test article assembly configuration in such a way to reproduce as much as possible the foreseen in-flight conditions. Furthermore a relevant instrumentation integrated system was designed and implemented into the test article to monitor the PWT test and the behaviour of the assembly during the exposure to the plasma conditions.
- Abstract document