Design of Experiments for Thermal Characterization of Metallic Foam

摘要

Metallic foams are being investigated for possible use in the thermal protection systems of reusable launch vehicles. As a result, the performance of these materials needs to be characterized over a wide range of temperatures and pressures. A radiation/conduction model is used to study heat transfer in metallic foams for the purpose of designing experiments to measure thermal properties. Candidates for the optimal transient experiment to determine the intrinsic thermal properties of the model are found by two methods. First, an optimality criterion is used in an experiment to find all of the parameters using one heating event. Second, a pair of heating events is used to determine the parameters in which one heating event is optimal for finding the parameters related to conduction, whereas the other heating event is optimal for finding the parameters associated with radiation. Simulated data containing random noise were analyzed to determine the parameters using both methods.