THOR - Innovative Thermal Management Concepts for Future Space Vehicles

Kurzfassung

For future space vehicles significant improvements in flight performance are required in the long term. Next generation orbiters and to a huge extent hypersonic transport vehicles will need fast flight path control for efficient operation, a requirement that cannot be met with extremely blunted components. A significant reduction of bluntness, however, means significantly higher peak heat loads which are beyond the capabilities of the conventional thermal management concept. Future thermal management concepts will need to be defined globally. The main challenges for thermal management will be an equilibration of thermal loading by transferring heat efficiently from highly loaded surface areas to less loaded regions and the consideration and inclusion of active cooling techniques. Within the European FP7 research project THOR, four thermal management concepts were considered which all appeared well suited for global thermal management a priori. The concepts were defined based on recent progress in base material development, providing new materials with tailored properties for being integrated in thermal protection systems, as e.g. carbon-based fibres with a huge thermal conductivity which exceeds the conductivity of conventional fibres by at least an order of Magnitude, and SiC based ceramic foams with operational temperatures being very close to those of conventional dense ceramic matrix composite (CMC) materials. Experimentally, a significant potential had been observed and validated for the reduction of surface temperatures by the long-distance thermal exchange capabilities of thermal radiation and by transpiration cooling of external surfaces.