Determination of the body shape for minimum radiative heating along a flight trajectory

Abstract

Space vehicles are subject to intense aerodynamic heating in planetary entry. According to estimates in [1], the heat shield mass for entry of a probe into the atmospheres of the outer planets can make up 20–50% of its total mass; here the radiative component predominates in the aerodynamic heating. It is therefore interesting to investigate methods of reducing the heat flux to the nose region of a vehicle. Analysis shows [2–6] that, for a given atmospheric composition, the heat-shield weight is determined by the trajectory, the body shape, the heat-protection method, and the chemical composition and the thermophysical and optical properties of the heat shield material. In such a general statement of the problem, optimization of the heat-shield mass depends on many parameters, and has not been solved hitherto. A number of papers have examined simpler problems, associated with reducing spacevehicle heating: optimization of the trajectory from the condition that the total heat flux to the body stagnation point should be a minimum for given probe parameters [2, 3], optimization of the characteristic probe size for a given trajectory [2–4], and optimization of the probe shape in a class of conical bodies at a given trajectory point [3, 5, 6J. In [7] a variational problem was formulated to determine the shape of an axisymmetric body from the condition that the radiative heat flux to the body at a given trajectory point should be a minimum for the entire surface, and an analytical solution was found for this in limiting cases. The present paper investigates a more general variational problem: determination of the shape of an axisymmetric body from the condition that the total radiative influx of heat to the body along its atmospheric trajectory should be a minimum. A solution has been obtained for a class of slender bodies for different isoperimetric conditions.