In order to reduce the shock-wave drag and aerodynamic heating of hypersonic vehicles effectively a new concept of non-ablative thermal protection system was proposed based on the idea of flowfield reconstruction. In this nonablative thermal protection system a spike-blunt body structure and lateral jets are combined together to realize the flowfield modification. The spike transforms the bow shock into a conical shock, and the lateral jets increase the angle of conical shock wave and keep it away from the blunt body to avoid severe shock/shock interactions. Flow visualizations and pressure measurements were conducted in a hypersonic wind tunnel at Mach number 6 to demonstrate this concept. Numerical simulations were also carried out. Both experimental and numerical results demonstrate that the non-ablative thermal protection system works well for shock-wave drag reduction and thermal protection. The peak pressure at the reattachment region is reduced by 65% even under 4 deg attack angle by the lateral jet. Experimental data also show that the working pressure of lateral jets is much lower than that of forwardfacing jets at the stagnation point. All the results show that the engineering application of non-ablative thermal protection system appears to be quite promising.

The article was published as:
Liu YF,Jiang ZL. Concept of non-ablative thermal protection system for hypersonic vehicles. AIAA JOURNAL, 2013, 51(3):584-590, doi: 10.2514/1.J051875