Advances in Boundary Layer Investigations and Heat Flux Measurements in 1.2 MW VKI Plasmatron

Speaker: Daniel Guariglia, von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics
June 26, 2014

Presentation

Abstract

Future manned and unmanned space missions will include bringing back ground sample from Mars and asteroids. The necessity to simulate the conditions that a capsule encounters during the re-entry phase, in a ground facility, has grown in importance as the request for more challenging space missions. The 1.2 MW Plasmatron facility at the VKI is the most powerful ICP wind tunnel in the world and in this project, it has been pushed towards its limits to reach the highest measurable heat-flux. This to fulfill the requirements for testing new Thermal Protection Materials (TPM) for next extra-planetary missions.

In this talk, we will expose the experimental measurement techniques that have been recently implemented at the Plasmatron facility, in order to investigate the boundary layer developing in cold wall conditions at low and high heat flux conditions, at low and high total pressure. The characterization of the boundary layer has a crucial impact on the validation of the CFD simulations which aim to reproduce the plasma flow. Accurate measurements are important to verify the accuracy of the predictions and to evaluate the necessary actions to improve it.

We conducted the experiments at high heat flux conditions, in parallel with boundary layer measurements. The increased light emission in the region close to the surface, facilitated the investigation with optical techniques, such as emission spectroscopy.

Finally, we assessed the capability of the VKI Plasmatron to recreate high heat fluxes, exceeding 8 MW/m2 for subsonic flow, and 16.5 MW/m2 with supersonic flow. This achievement consents now to test new TPM in prevision of re-entry missions from Mars.

Biography

Daniel Guariglia completed his M.S. in Aerospace Engineering in 2012 at Università degli Studi di Napoli "Federico II" (Italy). Title of the thesis was "Thermographical analysis on a deployable re-entry capsule tested in 'SCIROCCO' Plasma Wind Tunnel." He obtained a Research Master Degree in 2013 at the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics (Belgium). There he assessed the capability of the 1.2 MW Plasmatron facility to simulate high heat fluxes for testing materials for extra-planetary re-entry missions. In 2013 he obtained a Marie Curie fellowship to start a PhD at the von Karman Institute in the Aeroacoustics domain. He is actually involved in the AeroTraNet2 project, aiming to study shock-cells noise on a subsonic/supersonic co-axial jet.

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