Ablative Thermal Analysis Tool in ESATAN

Abstract

System level thermal analysis of space vehicles car rying ablative shields is usually performed by coupling the Thermal Mathematical Model (TMM) of the re-entry vehicle with the ablative bond line temperature resulting f rom thermo-ablative simulation. Such simulation is typically conducted by superimposing an ablative back wall condition. During these years, thanks also to the direct experience g ained on ESA programs involving ablative shields like IXV, the need of a more strongly coupl ed thermal analysis has become higher in order to optimize both shield and thermal control d esigns. Being this numerical procedure involving different software, hence requiring the m anagement of a complex iterative approach, the claim for a “one shot run” increased, this to remove time consuming and error prone iterations and improve model management/configuration control. In this frame TAS-I and Politecnico di Torino devel oped a new tool able to run directly into ESATAN the ablative analysis, allowing a full integ ration of ablative shield model with the host vehicle TMM. This paper describes the analytical model and 1D numerical scheme adopted and the verification and validation runs pe rformed.