Development of a Mid-Pressure Arc-Heated Facility for Hypersonic Vehicle Testing

摘要

There is currently no capability for simulating the most severe flight conditions in the high enthalpy "Mid-Pressure/Mid-Altitude" regime used by glide vehicles, capsule RVs, and interceptors existing within DoD and NASA. Current facilities cannot simulate shear, heating, and turbulence in combination adequately. We discuss the development of a test capability to fill this existing gap in hypersonic testing. This capability is being developed at the Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) using the Center's 70 MW H3 arc heater facility as a test bed. This new capability will address mid-atmosphere hypersonic flight for vehicles operating between the trajectories of lifting body and ballistic vehicles, including interceptors, glide vehicles, and maneuvering reentry vehicles. While technology development can be made with existing utilities, an investment program is required to provide the infrastructure changes needed to field this test capability. We discuss the current technology shortfall, describe the proposed capability, and provide information on the technological progress made in extending the run time, pressure, and enthalpy envelope of the segmented heaters that supports this capability.