Marius FRANZE, Viola WARTEMANN, C. MERREM, Henning ELSÄSSER, Tobias RUHE, Thino EGGERS, Hendrik WEIHS
DOI Number: XXX-YYY-ZZZ
Conference number: HiSST 2024-00113
The Reusable Flight Experiment (ReFEx) is an experimental vehicle, which is developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). It simulates the re-entry of a reusable booster stage. After being propelled with a VSB30 rocket to an altitude of about 135 km it will perform an autonomous re-entry. This paper is focused on the analysis of the aerothermal loads. Different approaches are applied for the investigations of the thermal heating: from a very conservative worst-case analysis up to a full-coupled simulation via the DLR CONF²AS² tool (Coupled Numerical Fluid Flight Mechanic And Structure Simulation). The trajectory includes the launch as well as re-entry flight phase. The focus of the heating process analysis is on the experimental ReFEx vehicle itself.