Aerospace vehicles operating at high speeds during the atmosphere flight regime experience aerodynamic heating. The determination of aerodynamic heat flux and loads is a key requisite for aerothermal design and material selection. These can be estimated using engineering design correlations and numerical simulations, which need to be validated with measurements in ground tests and flight. Aerodynamic heating studies on a typical scramjet inlet configuration were presented earlier. This talk focuses on the results of the extension of numerical simulations to study the sensitivity of parameters like: geometrical aspects, flow nature, grid aspects and turbulent models.



Atmospheric re-entry missions result in extreme surface heating due to dissipation of high kinetic energy. For larger sized re-entry bodies at very high speeds, radiative heating from the shock layer becomes important. The estimation as well as measurement of shock layer radiation is complex. High enthalpy tests (10 to 11 MJ/kg) are carried out in a shock tunnel facility over a 0.3 m diameter flat disc specimen with instrumentation to measure total and radiative heating. Coaxial thermocouples and Atomic Layer Thermopile (ALTP) heat flux sensors are used. An optical window with desired transmission characteristics ahead of ALTP sensor measures radiative heating alone. Detailed calibration studies and measurements from shock tunnel tests will be presented. The study establishes ALTP heat flux sensors as a prospective sensor for radiation measurements in shock tunnel test conditions.