Test of aero-heating in hypersonic non-equilibrium flow and numerical simulation study

Abstract

In the design of hypersonic vehicle thermal protection, precise prediction on the non-equilibrium aerodynamic heating in condition of hypersonic flow has been recognized as the difficult and hot topic in the current academic and engineering field. In this paper, a simple spherical column thermal model was designed. The surface catalytic properties of the model and plug-type calorimeter were changed by sputtering Au and SiO2 on the surface. In the arc tunnel, a hypersonic non-equilibrium flow aerodynamic heating test was carried out to obtain the aerodynamic heating data of the model surface under both near complete catalysis and near non-catalysis. Based on the comparative analysis of test results and numerical calculation results, the numerical prediction method of high temperature chemical non-equilibrium aerodynamic heating is validated. The results show that the catalytic properties of the surface material have a significant effect on the non-equilibrium aerodynamic heating; the catalytic effect on the spherical surface is obvious, the complete catalytic heating is higher than the non-catalytic heating, but the catalytic effect on the cylinder surface is weaker. The numerical simulation results show that the difference of the heat flux between the different wall catalytic conditions is greater than that of the ground test results; completely catalytic wall heat flux within 5% of the difference, completely non-catalytic wall heat flux difference of more than 10%.