The GHIBLI Plasma Wind Tunnel in CIRA performances : validation activities results
- Paper number
IAC-07-C2.6.02
- Author
Mr. Federico De Filippis, CIRA Italian Aerospace Research Centre, Italy
- Year
2007
- Abstract
Since 2001 at CIRA in Capua (Italy) a large scale arc-jet 70 MW Power Plasma Wind Tunnel is operative and is named SCIROCCO. The hypersonic jet generated by this facility has a diameter of about 2 m and allows to carry out simulations of atmospheric re-entry environments around very large size test article (up to 80 cm diameter front size). Few years ago the CIRA decided to extend the set of its laboratories with a lower power hypersonic facility of to execute not expensive tests on small size Thermal Protection Systems material articles. The name of this new facility is GHIBLI and it will be used by the re-entering space vehicle designers during the first phase of their working activities, to make a screening between various material useful to realize the various parts of the Thermal Protection Systems assemblies. In a subsequent phase of the TPS design, the Customers will have the possibility to test the whole assembly in SCIROCCO. The GHIBLI facility realisation will be completed during this year. The process operating flow is air and the electric arc heater has a power of about 2 MW. The Test Chamber is a horizontal cylinder with 2 m in diameter and 2 m in length. The convergent-divergent nozzle throat diameter is 10 mm, and two configurations are available: 50 mm and 150 mm exit diameters. The maximum allowable model front dimension is 10 cm in diameter and the maximum run time duration is about 30 min. The GHIBLI facility is also proposed to the aero-thermodynamic community for tests with advanced scientific analysis aims. In facts, the Data Acquisition system (DAS) allows to acquire signals from a lot of instruments and the optical windows of the Test Chamber permits the use of the thermograph , pyrometer and spectroscopy techniques. In this paper, a description of the facility and of the activities planned to carry out the facility validation is reported, as well as the state of the art of the testing activities.The available test results are discussed in relationship with the design phase process parameters predictions.
- Abstract document