Abstract
The numerical simulation of flow field around Hayabusa capsule loaded with light-weight ablator thermal response coupled with pyrolysis gas flow inside the ablator was carried out. In addition, the radiation from high temperature gas around the capsule was coupled with flow field. Hayabusa capsule reentered the atmosphere about 12 km/sec in velocity and Mach number about 30. During such an atmospheric entry, space vehicle is exposed to very savior aerodynamic heating due to convection and radiation. In this study, Hayabusa capsule was treated as a typical model of the atmospheric entry spacecraft. The light-weight ablator had porous structure, and permeability was an important parameter to analyze flow inside ablator. In this study, permeability was a variable parameter dependent on density of ablator. It is found that the effect of permeability of light-weight ablator was important with this analysis.
Highlights
About the space mission in near future, it is expected that the sample return mission like Stardust and Hayabusa increases
The numerical simulation of flow field around Hayabusa capsule loaded with light-weight ablator thermal response coupled with pyrolysis gas flow inside the ablator was carried out
Numerical and experimental studies have been conducted for determining the thermal response of a light-weight ablator exposed to a flow field generated by an arc-heated wind tunnel, which is often used for a heating test of an ablator [9,10,11]
Summary
About the space mission in near future, it is expected that the sample return mission like Stardust and Hayabusa increases. In Japan, a light-weight ablator (300 - 400 kg/m3) for middle range heat flux is being developed in JAXA [3] These light-weight ablators will become more and more important for expanding the capability of future missions and sophisticated numerical models are needed to predict their thermal response more correctly. Numerical and experimental studies have been conducted for determining the thermal response of a light-weight ablator exposed to a flow field generated by an arc-heated wind tunnel, which is often used for a heating test of an ablator [9,10,11]. In the present study, the thermal response simulation code is extended so that it can treat the pyrolysis gas flow as unsteady phenomena in two-dimensional axisymmetric coordinate. The code is developed for application to wider range of the flow conditions for a nitrogen flow and for an air flow
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