Innovative Thermal Management Concepts for Space Vehicles

Abstract

Future aerospace transportation demands solutions that exceed the performance of current systems and up-to-date material limits. Therefore, new and disruptive solutions must be envisaged to meet those extreme conditions. In the search of new solutions for sharp leading edges of the future hypersonic re-entry or transport vehicles, the THOR project, composed of 8 European organizations (industries, research centres and universities) and one Japanese Agency (JAXA), is actively working on definition, design, implementation, and simulation of new passive and active thermal management solutions and their verification in relevant environment (high enthalpy facilities). The paper provides an overview of the recent developments on the four concepts that are targeted in the project, applying different physical methodologies: - Passive cooling using highly conductive carbon-based fibres - Passive cooling with intensive internal radiative exchange - Active cooling using a ceramic sandwich-TPS with ceramic foams - Active transpiration cooling of external surfaces Details on these thermal management concepts, requirements from end users, test configurations as well as results from experimental and numerical verification are given.