Coupling Environment Experiment Technique of Radiation and Convection Aerodynamic Heating in Wind Tunnel

A coupling environment experiment capability has been developed that incorporates mutual interactions between radiative heating and convective heating on FD-04 arc-heating wind tunnel of China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics (CAAA), which to date had been unattainable. The wind tunnel contains a multi-segment arc heater to generate high-temperature and high-speed airflow to simulate the convective heating part of the aerodynamic heating. It also equipped with a solar radiation simulator to makes up the radiative heating part in the total aerodynamic heating. This experiment technique had successfully proceeded on an aerothermal evaluation test of a certain kind of thermal protection material. Test results show that with the increase of the proportion of radiative heat flux, the mass and linear ablation rate of the material and the max temperature rise on the back of the models are reduced. The surface temperature of the models, on the contrary, grows with the increase of the proportion of radiative heat flux. Overall, this experiment technique extends the performance of arc-tunnel and provides a new aspect for delicate design on thermal protection system.