Virtual damages simulation of the metallic thermal protection system panel

Abstract

The metallic thermal protection system (MTPS) panel, the most promising thermal protection structure for spacecraft, is becoming the research focus for the new generation TPS. Investigation on MTPS and its failure modes is very helpful for its health monitoring. Presently, the researches on MTPS mainly focused on the materials and the structures of the MTPS panel. To carry out research on MTPS health monitoring,it is of special and realistic significance to find out the reasons for the fault and the influence of the fault. The statistics of historical faults show that its most common failure modes include the impact damages, the panel-to-panel gaps and the connection looseness etc. For the metallic thermal protection system panel, two faults modes, the impact damage and the panel-to-panel gap, are chosen to investigate its thermal responses and the faults modes effect. Based on its finite element models, several cases are simulated to research the heat conduction in the MTPS panel. The corresponding thermal field in every cases and the curve of temperature at some key points can be obtained. With an impact damages on the MTPS panel, the radiation ability of the outer surface coating will decrease heavily and the temperature responses in the damage zones will rise sharply. With some panel-to-panel gaps between the MTPS panels for the reason of installation errors or the deformation of MTPS panel and so on, the temperature in the region closely near the gap will be far higher than the other parts in the same horizontal position, the temperature at the bottom of the MTPS panel near the gap would exceed the normal value. The numerical simulation results show the influences these two faults did to the thermal response of MTPS. May be several measures can be taken for the health management of MTPS according to the temperature distribution and the temperature variation tendency on some key position.