Poloni Erik, Grigat Felix, Eberhart Martin, Leiser David, Sautière Quentin, Ravichandran Ranjith, Delahaie Sara, Duernhofer Christian, Hoerner Igor, Hufgard Fabian, Loehle Stefan
High Enthalpy Flow Diagnostics Group, Institute of Space Systems, University of Stuttgart, 70569, Stuttgart, Germany.
Centre for Advanced Structural Ceramics, Department of Materials, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK.
Sci Rep. 2023 Aug 12;13(1):13135. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-40351-x.
Space exploration missions rely on ablative heat shields for the thermal protection of spacecraft during atmospheric entry flights. While dedicated research is needed for future missions, the scientific community has limited access to ablative materials typically used in aerospace. In this paper, we report the development of the HEFDiG Ablation-Research Laboratory Experiment Material (HARLEM), a carbon-phenolic ablator designed to supply the need for ablative materials in laboratory experiments. HARLEM is manufactured using polyacrylonitrile-based carbon fiber preforms and a simplified processing route for phenolic impregnation. We characterized the thermal protection performance of HARLEM in arcjet experiments conducted in the plasma wind tunnel PWK1 of the Institute of Space Systems at the University of Stuttgart. We assessed the performance of the new material by measuring surface recession rate and temperature using photogrammetry and thermography setups during the experiments, respectively. Our results show that HARLEM's thermal protection performance is comparable to legacy carbon-phenolic ablators that have been validated in different arcjet facilities or in-flight, as demonstrated by calculations of the effective heat of ablation and scanning electron microscopy of as-produced samples. In-house manufacturing of carbon-phenolic ablators enables the addition of embedded diagnostics to ablators, allowing for the acquisition of data on internal pressure and more sophisticated pyrolysis analysis techniques.
太空探索任务在大气层进入飞行期间依靠烧蚀热防护罩来保护航天器的热安全。虽然未来任务需要专门研究，但科学界获取通常用于航空航天的烧蚀材料的机会有限。在本文中，我们报告了HEFDiG烧蚀研究实验室实验材料（HARLEM）的开发情况，这是一种碳酚醛烧蚀材料，旨在满足实验室实验对烧蚀材料的需求。HARLEM是使用聚丙烯腈基碳纤维预制件和简化的酚醛浸渍加工路线制造的。我们在斯图加特大学空间系统研究所的等离子风洞PWK1中进行的电弧风洞实验中对HARLEM的热防护性能进行了表征。在实验过程中，我们分别使用摄影测量法和热成像装置测量表面退缩率和温度，以此评估这种新材料的性能。我们的结果表明，通过计算有效烧蚀热和对所制备样品进行扫描电子显微镜分析可知，HARLEM的热防护性能与已在不同电弧风洞设施或飞行中得到验证的传统碳酚醛烧蚀材料相当。碳酚醛烧蚀材料的内部制造能够在烧蚀材料中添加嵌入式诊断装置，从而获取内部压力数据并采用更复杂的热解分析技术。
