Coupled Thermal Analysis Method with Application to Metallic Thermal Protection Panels

Abstract

Metallic thermal protection systems are being considered for next-generation reusable launch vehicles. Experiments and numerical simulations show that heated metallic panels expand from the structure to create a quilt-like flow surface that alters the expected surface heating distribution. To model the thermal response of a metallic panel, this paper presents a two-dimensional boundary element procedure that is loosely coupled to a hypersonic computational fluid dynamics algorithm to solve coupled steady-state and transient heat conduction. First, the flowfield and internal temperature distribution of ceramic wing leading edge in a Mach 15 freestream is computed. Steady-state results are consistent with previous finite difference and finite element calculations. Transient computations show the peak temperature to occur at steady-state conditions. Second, the flowfield and resulting transient heat transfer is computed for convex and concave metallic panels. It is demonstrated that a transient conduction solution for a deformed metallic panel can be approximated by imposing the heat fluxes generated from a deformed surface flow solution onto an undeformed panel.