Aerothermodynamics of Pre-Flight and In-Flight Testing Methodologies for Atmospheric Entry Probes

Abstract

Spacecraft, returning back to Earth, experience a very harsh environment during the encounter with the particles of the atmosphere. One of the major issues of the atmospheric entry is the extreme aerodynamic heating and the exothermic chemical reactions due to the gas-surface interaction at hypersonic free stream velocities. There is a constant effort by the space agencies to increase the understanding of the re-entry flight dynamics to optimize the spacecraft and especially its thermal protection system design. During the design process, ground tests and numerical tools are extensively used for their low cost and controlled environment abilities. However, real flight tests are indispensable for ground test and numerical tools validation. Due to high costs, such missions are rarely launched and thus there is an increasing interest in small affordable entry probes. Such platforms, once matured enough, may serve as an easily accessible tool to produce experimental data. It is the aim of this dissertation to propose tools to improve ground test capabilities and on the other hand to present the design, and using the developed tools, the testing of aerothermodynamic experimental payloads to collect flight data with a small entry probe. QARMAN (QubeSat for Aerothermodynamic Research and Measurements on AblatioN) is a triple unit CubeSat with ablative and ceramic thermal protection systems. It will perform an atmospheric entry with 7.7 km/s and a peak heat flux of 1.7 MW/m2. The aim of the in-flight experiments is to retrieve real flight data on ablator efficiency (temperature, pressure, recession) and temperature-pressure measurements for transition on the side panels. The peculiar squared geometry of QARMAN led to the development of a Flight-to-Ground Duplication methodology accounting for spacecraft geometries. It allows duplicating fully the stagnation region of a spacecraft with an arbitrary geometry in subsonic plasma wind tunnels. As a requirement of this methodology, free stream characterization techniques, specifically enthalpy measurement techniques are introduced. Experimental and numerical databases are built. A thorough ablation characterization campaign in VKI Plasmatron is conducted to provide input for building material response models. The cork P50 ablator is studied in terms of surface and sub-surface temperatures, emissivity, mass loss, char-pyrolysis layers, outgassing species and recession and swelling profiles. Similar in-flight experiments are proposed for QARMAN flight for in-depth temperature and pressure. Methods to build models for advanced data treatment are proposed. A full picture of post-flight analysis strategy is described for each study to relate the ground tools and flight data