The Study On Thermal Protection Systems Design And Performance Evaluation For The Wing Leading-edge Of Reusable Launch Vehicle

The reusable launch vehicle (RLV) especially the wing leading-edge is subjectedto extreme aerodynamic heating during the re-entry. Therefore, thermal protectionsystems (TPS) is one of key tecnologies of reusable launch vehicle. The purpose of thispaper is to investigate the aerodynamic heating environment of wing leading-edge,estimate the thermal protection materials of wing leading-edge, analyze the temperaturefield of the thermal protection systems for wing leading-edge, and investigate theintegration structure design.As the important parameter for the design of the thermal protection, the analysisof heating environment needs a high accuracy. In the present paper, the aerodynamicheating environment of wing leading-edge for RLV has been analyzed in detail using acombination of engineering calculation, numerical calculation and wind-tunnel testing.The data of detailed aerodynamic heating environment of wing leading-edge has beenobtained, which is provided to the design of TPS.This paper has investigated the preparation process and properties of enhancedcarbon/carbon composites, and optimized the thermal protection materials of wingleading-edge. The thermal protection integration design of wing leading-edge was alsodiscussed, the sectional type thermal structure of cavity shell of wing leading-edgecomponents was presented. Based on3-dimensional thermal conduction method, theanalysis of temperature field for the TPS of wing leading-edge shows that thetemperature with gradient distribution decreases along the normal of shape surface,from shape surface to internal face at the same time. As the re-entry time increases, theaerodynamic thermal environment was extreme, the temperature of shape surface getstop value, and the internal temperature also became high. Because of the different of thethermophysical properties, the response of shape surface to aerodynamic heatingenvironment was fast with a rapid temperature rise. In contrast, the temperature gradientof internal face became small along the normal from internal face to shape surfaceowing to the low thermal conductivity. With the mitigation of aerodynamic heating, thebiggest temperature can be found in the middle layer rather than shape surface and theinternal face, which was good agreement with the heat-transfer process. The wingleading-edge structure was analyzed with finite element method, and the calculationresults showed that the value of thermal stress increased as the temperature. At last, thewing leading-edge structure was tested using wind-tunnel facilities to obtain thetemperature change rule, and estimate the reliability of the design for wing leading-edgestructure. In the present paper, the integration design and the analysis of temperature fieldcan be provided for better understanding of the design of TPS for RLV.