New Stagnation Arc Jet Model Design for Testing ADEPT 3-D Carbon Cloth

The test article design will be similar to a graphite "embroidery hoop" holding the fabric between the two cylinders, with insulation materials added to reduce the thermal contact between the high thermal conductivity carbon cloth and the high thermal mass of the graphite. Additional considerations that will feed into the design effort will be instrumentation. The ADEPT design approach takes advantage of the high thermal conductivity and emissivity of the carbon cloth, and the open back allows for much of the energy to be radiated off the back surface. The design will need to allow for determination of the temperatures of both the front and the back surfaces of the cloth, so accommodation of back surface pyrometry will be required. Working with the Human Mars analysis results on the predicted flowfield conditions, we will run simulations of the AHF conditions with varying gas mixtures to define a set of test conditions. With those conditions, we will iterate between design development and thermostructural analysis of the design to insure that the holder and specimen will survive the test environments. Once the design has closed, we will build one or two instrumented prototype AHF test article(s) that will be ready to test. This model will include instrumentation on the holder parts as well as the carbon cloth to verify the thermostructural analysis predictions. Due to the high cost of arc jet testing (~$37K/day), testing is not included in this proposal. More »