Development of a Dual-Layer Ablator for Spacecraft Heat Shield Applications

Rajesh Kumar CHINNARAJ, Young Chan KIM, Seong Man CHOI

DOI Number: 10.60853/rjav-rj31

Conference Number: HiSST-2024-0026

For spacecraft heat shield applications, we developed a dual-layer carbon-phenolic/silica phenolic ablator. The development of this dual-layer ablator began with testing a carbon-phenolic material with two different lamination angles of 0° and 30°, using a high-velocity oxygen fuel (HVOF) material ablation test facility. Based on HVOF results, the 30° carbon-phenolic material (used as a recession layer) is selected as the base for the dual-layer ablator. The 30° carbon-phenolic material was augmented with a silica-phenolic material (used as an insulating layer) and tested in a 0.4 MW supersonic arc-jet plasma wind tunnel. In plasma wind tunnel tests, dual-layer ablator specimens with varying thicknesses of carbon-phenolic layers and different surface shapes (flat-faced and hemispherical-faced) were tested. The plasma wind tunnel tests showed the specimen silica-phenolic recession layer internal temperatures were well below the set design limit of 453.15 K (180 °C). The surface temperatures of the hemispherical-faced specimens measured around 3000 K, approximately 350 K higher than those of the flat-faced specimens, leading to elevated internal temperatures. Under identical test conditions, hemispherical-faced specimens exhibited approximately 1.4 times greater recession and mass loss compared to the flat-faced specimens.

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Ablative Materials, Carbon Phenolic, Spacecraft Heat Shield, Thermal Protection System

In Categories: 1.Events, HiSST 2024, Materials and Structures

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