Research

A spacecraft during its entry into a planet’s atmosphere will be travelling at speeds of anywhere from 6 to 11 km/s, which depends on the vehicle’s trajectory. As spacecraft interacts with the atmosphere at such high speeds, a shock wave is formed around body. Due to this shock wave, immense amount of kinetic energy is converted into thermal energy. This thermal energy is responsible for high temperature of flows causing heat transfer. Radiative heat transfer will account for a sizable fraction of the heat transfer to spacecraft under these circumstances.

The goal of the research work is to establish a Hypersonic Expansion Tunnel for simulating high enthalpy hypersonic flow similar to re-entry of spacecraft into Earth’s atmosphere. This facility will be calibrated, followed by experiments on subscale models of spacecrafts to study Radiative heat transfer using emission spectroscopy. Obtained experimental data will provide a benchmark for comparison with numerical simulation as well as experimental radiative data obtained from other test facilities around the globe as a test of their validity.