OCTRA as Ultrasonically Absorptive Thermal Protection Material for Hypersonic Transition Suppression

Abstract

Previous investigations in the High Enthalpy Shock Tunnel G¨ottingen (HEG) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) show that carbon fiber reinforced carbon ceramic (C/C) surfaces can be utilized to damp hypersonic boundary layer instabilities resulting in a delay of boundary layer transition onset. Numerical stability analyses confirmed these experimental results. However, C/C has some disadvantages, especially the limited oxidation resistance and its low mechanical strength, which could be critical during hypersonic flights. Thus, an ultrasonically absorptive fiber reinforced ceramic material based on a silicon carbide (C/C-SiC) was developed in the past years to fulfill this need. The present paper addresses the numerical rebuild of the C/C-SiC absorber properties using impedance boundary conditions together with linear stability analysis. The focus of this paper is on the numerical comparison of the original C/C material and the improved C/C-SiC material, referred to as OCTRA in the literature. The influence on the second modes and the transition itself is investigated. The numerical results are compared with HEG wind tunnel tests. The wind tunnel model tested in HEG is a 7° half-angle blunted cone with an overall model length of about 1.1 m and a nose tip radius of 2.5 mm. These experiments were performed at Mach 7.5 and at different freestream unit Reynolds numbers.