Aerothermodynamic Testing of the Crew Exploration Vehicle at Mach 6 and Mach 10

摘要

An experimental wind-tunnel program is being conducted in support of a NASA wide effort to develop a SpacenShuttle replacement and to support the agency’s long-term objective of returning to the moon and Mars. This paperndocuments experimental measurements made on several scaled ceramic heat transfer models of the proposed ProjectnOrion Crew Exploration Vehicle. The experimental data highlighted in this paper will be used to assess numericalntools that will be used to generate the flight aerothermodynamic database. Global heat transfer images and centerlinenheat transfer distributions were obtained over a range of freestream Reynolds numbers and angles of attack with thenphosphor thermography technique. Temperature data were measured on the forebody and afterbody and were usednto compute the heating on the vehicle as well as the boundary-layer state on the forebody surface. Several modelnsupport configurations were assessed to minimize potential aftbody support interference. Although naturally fullyndeveloped turbulent levels were not obtained on the forebody, the use of boundary-layer trips generated fullyndeveloped turbulent flow. Laminar and turbulent computational results are shown to be in good agreement with thendata. In addition, the ability of the global phosphor thermography method to provide quantitative heatingnmeasurements in the low-temperature environment of the capsule base region was assessed and the lack of significantnmodel support hardware influence on heating was shown.