TESTS ON IXV TPS PANELS IN THE DLR ARC HEATED FACILITY L3K

Abstract

The main objectives of the IXV mission were to test thermal protection and hot structures, test a wide variety of new materials and concepts under flight conditions representative of a low Earth orbit return mission and investigate materials and concepts with different types of ceramics matrix composites and ablatives such as cork and silicon based materials. The objective of the experiments was to investigate different TPS materials, especially the variations of heat flux rates at the interfaces of different TPS materials in hypersonic flow environment generated in a the arc heated facility Cologne. Three different TPS materials were investigated, one Ceramic Matrix Composite (CMC) material, a cork material ablative material, P50, and a silicon material, SV2A.