IRFP: Investigation of the Radiative Interaction between Plasmas and Ablating Heat Shields

IRFP：等离子体与烧蚀隔热罩之间的辐射相互作用的研究

• 批准号: 1159126
• 负责人: Megan MacDonald
• 金额: $ 14.17万
• 依托单位: MacDonald Megan
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-11-01 至 2014-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1159126&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: IRFP; Investigation; Radiative; Interaction; between

The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.This award will support a twenty-four-month research fellowship by Dr. Megan E. MacDonald to work with Dr. Christophe Laux at Ecole Centrale Paris in Paris, France.Any spacecraft entering a planetary atmosphere requires thermal protection to prevent overheating and burn-up of the spacecraft upon entry. One method of protecting against such extreme heating environments is an ablative thermal protection system. As a method of transporting heat away from the spacecraft, this type of thermal protection is designed to pyrolyse. This results in a boundary layer between the heat shield and the atmospheric plasma which is rich with species from both the shield and the plasma. While it is known that this boundary layer mixture can play an important role in the radiative heating of the spacecraft by absorbing certain wavelengths radiated from the atmospheric plasma, few experimental efforts have been carried out to study the quantitative effects of these boundary layer species on radiative blocking.The current project studies both the composition of the boundary layer and the degree to which these ablator pyrolysis species absorb radiation. This is being carried out through spectroscopic studies of an air plasma/ablator system in a plasma torch laboratory. Concurrent modeling of the system with a plasma modeling code, SPECAIR, is being carried out to further validate this code.This project is of clear importance for reentry applications, where a direct result of the validation of the SPECAIR code will be its use as a predictive design tool for ablative heat shields. This will not only advance the state of-the-art in ablator capabilities in Europe (which will be essential to any future international planetary entry or sample-return missions) but also increase the state of the knowledge in the U.S., as Dr. MacDonald intends to return and join the U.S. research community at a national laboratory.

国际研究奖学金计划使美国科学家和工程师能够在国外进行9至24个月的研究。该计划的奖项提供了联合研究的机会，以及使用独特或互补的设施，专业知识和国外的实验条件。麦克唐纳与克里斯托弗·劳克斯博士在法国巴黎的巴黎中央学院合作。任何进入行星大气层的航天器都需要热保护，以防止航天器在进入时过热和烧毁。 一种防止这种极端加热环境的方法是烧蚀热保护系统。 作为一种将热量从航天器中转移出去的方法，这种类型的热保护被设计成热解。 这导致在热屏蔽和大气等离子体之间的边界层，其富含来自屏蔽和等离子体两者的物质。 虽然已知这种边界层混合物可通过吸收大气等离子体辐射的某些波长而在航天器的辐射加热中发挥重要作用，目前的研究工作主要集中在边界层的组成和烧蚀材料热解组分吸收的程度两个方面辐射 这是通过在等离子体炬实验室的空气等离子体/烧蚀系统的光谱研究进行的。 目前正在用等离子体建模代码SPECAIR对系统进行并行建模，以进一步验证该代码，该项目对再入应用具有明显的重要性，SPECAIR代码验证的直接结果将是用作烧蚀热屏蔽的预测设计工具。 这不仅将提高欧洲烧蚀能力的最新水平（这对未来任何国际行星进入或样品返回任务都至关重要），而且还将提高美国的知识水平，因为麦克唐纳博士打算回国，加入美国国家实验室的研究团体。