Experimental and Numerical Study of CMC Leading Edges in Hypersonic Flows

Abstract

Future transportation concepts aim at high supersonic or hypersonic speeds, where the formerly sharp boundaries between aeronautic and aerospace applications become blurred. One of the major issues involved to high speed flight are extremely high aerothermal loads, which especially appear at the leading edges of the plane’s wings and at sharp edged air intake components of the propulsion system. As classical materials like metals or simple ceramics would thermally and structurally fail here, new materials have to be applied. In this context, lightweight ceramic matrix composites (CMC) seem to be prospective candidates as they are high-temperature resistant and offer low thermal expansion along with high specific strength at elevated temperature levels. A generic leading edge model with a ceramic wing assembly with a sweep back angle of 53° was designed, which allowed for easy leading edge sample integration of different CMC materials. The samples consisted of the materials C/C-SiC (non-oxide), OXIPOL and WHIPOX (both oxide) with a nose radius of 2 mm. In addition, a sharp edged C/C-SiC sample was prepared to investigate the nose radius influence. Overall, 13 thermocouples were installed inside the entire model to measure the temperature evolution at specific locations, whereby 5 thermocouples were placed inside the leading edge sample itself. In addition, non-intrusive techniques were applied for surface temperature measurements: An infrared camera was used to measure the surface temperature distribution and at specific spots, the surface temperature was also measured by pyrometers. Following, the model was investigated in DLR’s arc-heated facility L3K at a total enthalpy of 8.5 MJ/kg, Mach number of 7.8, different angles of attack and varying wing inclination angles. These experiments provide a sound basis for the simulation of aerothermally loaded CMC leading edge structures. Such fluid-structure coupled approaches have been performed by FOI, basing on a modal approach for the conduction model. Results show, that the temperature profiles are correctly depicted dependent on the model’s angle of attack.