Preflight and Postflight Thermal/Structural Analysis of BOLT-2: The Holden Mission

Abstract

BOLT-2: The Holden Mission, a follow-on to the BOLT experiment, was designed to measure the characteristics of turbulent flow in the hypersonic flight regime. This paper summarizes preflight transient thermal and structural analyses for the predicted flight trajectories that led to the selection of suitable materials for the flight experiment. Following the successful flight in March 2022, the preflight analysis methods, along with temperature measurements from the flight, were used to conduct a postflight thermal analysis based on the as-flown trajectory that attempted to match the flight data. Conservatism in the preflight design analysis was compared to the flight measurements. Databases of computed laminar and turbulent heating were generated as part of this effort that can aid in future analysis of the experimental data. The effects of modeling transitional heating during ascent were quantified when compared to a fully turbulent heating assumption. A set of estimated three-dimensional surface temperature distributions have been computed and were found to be a good match to the available flight data. Postflight structural modeling was used to estimate the differential thermal expansion at the nosetip/frustum joint interface.