Simulation of the Stagnation Region Microcrack Growth During Space Shuttle Reentry

摘要

The newly developed reinforced-carbon-carbon damage assessment model is applied to a micrometeoroid crack at the stagnation point of a sphere for a space shuttle reentry trajectory. The model, which has been validated against arcjet tests (Titov, E., Zhong, J., Levin, D., and Picetti, D., "Simulation of Carbon-Carbon Crack Growth due to Carbon Oxidation in High Temperatures," Journal of Thermophysics and Heat Transfer, Vol. 23, No. 3, July Sept 2009, pp. 489-501.) (Titov, E., Levin, D., Picetti, D., and Anderson, B. P., "Thermal Protection System Crack Growth Simulation Using Advanced Grid Morphing Techniques," Journal of Thermophysics and Heat Transfer, Vol. 24, No. 4,2010, pp. 708-720.), predicts the microhole wall material response to the high-energy, atomic oxygen rich flow to simulate a micrometeoroid impact of the space shuttle nose cap shield during the STS-5 mission reentry. The extent of the crack damage site hole diameter was found to grow by a factor of 2.7, which agrees within about 30% of the NASA Johnson Space Center reinforced-carbon-carbon damage growth tool, version 2, a semi-empirical approach developed through extensive arcjet testing.