SHEFEX II Flight Instrumentation and Preparation of Post Flight Analysis

Abstract

A main disadvantage of modern TPS systems for re-entry vehicles is the expensive manufacturing and maintenance process due to the complex geometry of these blunt nose configurations. To reduce the costs and to improve the aerodynamic performance the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is following a different approach using TPS structures consisting of flat ceramic tiles. To test these new sharp edged TPS structures the SHEFEX I flight experiment was designed and successfully performed by DLR in 2005. To further improve the reliability of the sharp edged TPS design at even higher Mach numbers, a second flight experiment SHEFEX II will be performed in September 2011. In comparison to SHEFEX I the second flight experiment has a fully symmetrical shape and will reach a maximum Mach number of about 11. Furthermore the vehicle has an active steering system using four canards to control the flight attitude during re-entry, e.g. roll angle, angle of attack and sideslip. After a successful flight the evaluation of the flight data will be performed using a combination of numerical and experimental tools. The data will be used for the improvement of the present numerical analysis tools and to get a better understanding of the aerothermal behaviour of sharp TPS structures. This paper presents the flight instrumentation of the SHEFEX II TPS. In addition the concept of the post flight analysis is presented.