Design and Bench Testing of a Radiatively Heated Model for Hypersonic Experiments

What is it about?

This work develops a cost-efficient experimental technique to study the coupling of fluid, thermal, and structural dynamics in short-duration supersonic and hypersonic wind tunnels. Most wind tunnel facilities are unable to convectively heat an experimental model to representative flight conditions during their short operation time. Instead the presented design uses thermal radiation to set the model temperature before flow begins. The geometry is a thin rectangular plate clamped on the upwind and downwind sides. This experiment will identify dominant flow structures and obtain high-fidelity measurements of temperature and structural deformation. The data will be used to validate and develop advanced coupled simulation techniques and design tools.

Featured Image

Photo by Hermeus on Unsplash

Photo by Hermeus on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Replicating high energy flows encountered by aircraft is a persistent difficulty in hypersonics. It is particularly difficult and expensive to generate realistic temperatures on test models via aerothermal heating. The presented design methodology creates wind tunnel models with a desired temperature in an inexpensive and repeatable manner, regardless of the facility. This enables systematic study of the effects of heated panels in hypersonic flow in a variety of flow conditions by a wider range of researchers.