This paper is devoted to predict laminar and turbulent heating rates around blunt re-entry spacecraft at hypersonic conditions. Heating calculation of a hypersonic body is normally performed during the critical part of its flight trajectory. The procedure is of an inverse method, where a shock wave is assumed, and the body shape that supports this shock, as well as the flowfield between the sho...

The experimental investigation on a 60 apex-angle is carried out to study feasibility of simultaneous measurement of drag and aerodynamic heating in a shock tunnel. A three-component accelerometer balance system is used to measure the drag whereas platinum thin film gauges are used for heating rate measurements on the surface of the blunt cone model. Since every ground test and flight test data...

Hypersonic heating computations are still challenging due to difficulties in “A) robust capturing of shockwaves” and “B) accurate prediction of heating.” Based on our numerical survey for A), we found that the dissipation inside the numerical shock wave structure (where no physical or mathematical explanation is valid) must be proportional to Mach number, in contrast to Mach independent dissipa...

The proposed Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission is intended to deliver a large rover to the Martian surface within 10 km of the target site. This paper presents computational fluid dynamics (CFD) predictions of forebody heating rates for two MSL entry configurations with fixed aerodynamic trim tabs. Results are compared to heating on a 70-deg sphere-cone reference geometry. All three heatshi...

Neutron diffraction and Extended X-ray Absorption Fine Structure (EXAFS) studies have been carried out on a range of praseodymium gallate glasses (Pr2O3-Ga2O3) prepared by aerodynamic levitation and laser heating. The short and intermediate range ordering around the rare-earth have been obtained by a multi-technique method. The results show that simple molecular dynamics simulations give a good...