Analysis of the magnetohydrodynamic heat shield system for hypersonic vehicles

Abstract

During hypersonic flight, the weakly-ionized plasma layer post shock can be utilized for flow control by externally applying a magnetic field. The Lorentz force, which is induced by the interaction between the ionized air and the magnetic field, decelerates the flow in the shock layer. Consequently, the thickness of the shock layer is increased and the convective heat flux can be mitigated. This so-called magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) heat shield system has been proved to be effective in heat flux mitigation by many researchers.Different from the dipole magnet conventionally used in previous researches on MHD heat shield, a normal columned solenoid-based MHD thermal protection system model is built in this paper. The present numerical analysis is mainly based on the low magneto-Reynolds MHD model, which neglects the induction magnetic field. Hall effect and the ion-slip effect are also neglected here because an insulating wall is assumed. With these hypothesis, a series of axisymmetric simulations on the flow field of Japanese Orbital Reentry Experimental Capsule (OREX) are performed to analyze the influence of different externally applied magnetic fields on the efficiency of MHD thermal protection. First, based on the dipole magnet field, the influence of magnetic induction density is analyzed. Second， differences between the efficiency of MHD thermal protection under three types of magnetic field, namely dipole magnet, solenoid magnet, and uniform magnet field are compared. Finally, the influence of the geometric parameters of solenoid magnet on the MHD thermal protection is analyzed. Results show that, saturation effect exists in the process of MHD heat flux mitigation and it confines the effectiveness of MHD heat shield system. Thermal protection capabilities under three types of magnetic field are ranked from weak to strong as dipole magnet, solenoid magnet, and uniform magnet field. Under the same magnetic induction intensity at the stagnation point, first， the increase of solenoid radius improves its effectiveness in MHD thermal protection; second, the influence of solenoid length on the efficiency of MHD thermal protection is weak, indicating that the solenoid length can be optimized with the remaining two factors, namely the exciting current density and the total weight of solenoid magnet. Finally, the closer distance between the solenoid and stagnation point has negative influence on MHD thermal protection for the stagnation and the shoulder area of the reentry capsule.