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.