Aerodynamic Testing at Mach Numbers From 15 to 20

Lukasiewicz, J.; Whitfield, Jack D.; Jackson, Richard

doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-395595-1.50025-8

Cited by 9 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 3 publications

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“…During the height of the space race, extensive experimental work was done to study atmospheric re-entry plasmas both in laboratories and around re-entry vehicles. While most of the laboratory work concentrated on simulating the thermal and chemical phenomena that occur near the surface of a re-entry vehicle for testing heat shields [1][2][3][4], not much work was done to simulate the actual plasma number densities present during atmospheric re-entry. The experiments done on re-entry vehicles consisted mostly of electrostatic probe and microwave interferometer tests and successfully measured plasma density and electron temperature as functions of altitude and distance away from the re-entry vehicle [5,6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using a helicon source to simulate atmospheric re-entry plasma densities and temperatures in a laboratory setting

Lemmer¹,

Gallimore²,

Smith³

2009

Plasma Sources Sci. Technol.

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The purpose of this research is to develop a plasma system capable of reproducing plasma densities found during atmospheric re-entry of a capsule. We developed a 150 mm diameter helicon source at the University of Michigan Plasmadynamics and Electric Propulsion Laboratory (PEPL) and used a Langmuir probe to characterize plasma properties downstream. The helicon source was operated with argon gas at a background pressure of 0.6 mTorr. We used a commercial RF-compensated single Langmuir probe to measure ion number density and electron temperature in the region downstream of the helicon source where we want to create conditions similar to those found during hypersonic flight within the atmosphere. We measured these values with and without the presence of a large 450 mm wide by 550 mm long surface downstream in the horizontal plane to simulate a vehicle surrounded by plasma in order to determine how the downstream body affects plasma properties. We found that the presence of a surface downstream of the helicon source lowers the downstream plasma density range from between 1.7 × 10 17 and 3.3 × 10 17 m −3 down to 0.55 × 10 17 and 1.3 × 10 17 m −3. In addition, the peak plasma potential decreases from 65 to 55 V, but the electron temperature remains unchanged ranging between 1.5 and 6.5 eV.

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