Design Charts for Transient Temperature and Thermal Stress Distributions in Thermally Thick Plates

Abstract

SummaryA set of design charts is presented for the calculation of transient temperature and thermal stress distributions in thermally thick plates subjected to aerodynamic heating.The method is particularly useful for determining temperatures and thermal stresses in plates with an arbitrary variation of the heat transfer coefficient and the adiabatic wall temperature of the boundary layer. The present method is based on repetitive applications of the exact analytical solution to a unit triangular variation of the adiabatic wall temperature and a constant heat transfer coefficient. The actual variation of the adiabatic wall temperature is represented as a series of straight lines while the heat transfer coefficient is approximated by a step function. The temperature distribution through the plate is separated into linear and “self-equilibrating” temperature distributions to facilitate thermal stress calculations; these distributions can be obtained directly from the design charts presented in this paper.The general principle of this semi-numerical method is also applied to thermally thin plates subjected to arbitrary heating conditions.