Abstract
This research journal is an attempt to replicate re-entry temperatures of heat shields that can be used to predict thermal behaviour of Super-Orbital re-entry vehicles like Orion, Apollo, and Stardust in the laboratory using Joule heating. This publication investigates the temperature field of a prototype heat shield driven by Joule heating and presents simulation results by connecting cylindrical tungsten rods (20mm in length and variable diameters) to a heat shield (50mm diameter and 2mm thickness). The problem is solved numerically using ANSYS WorkBench to examine the surface temperatures up to 25000C using resistive heating. The optimal achievable temperature distribution field is about 1700K when the heat shield is assembled to cylindrical tungsten rod of diameter 8-10mm at a steady state current of 600-800A. The 1700K value is still lesser than surface re-entry temperatures of the Orion-MPCV which is about 3000K. This indicates further effort is needed to improve the temperature field. Hence simulation results are graphically presented and quantitatively discussed.
Keyword: Heat shield; Joule heating; re-entry temperatures; thermal diffusivity.