Cooling Characteristics of C/C Composite Material Structure with a Metallic Tube Fixed by Elastic Forces of Each Material

Abstract

A new cooling structure of C/C composites was made to use in high temperature environment over 2000 K. A stainless steel tube was used as a cooling channel. The stainless steel tube was fixed to the C/C composites by the elastic force of each material. The performance of the cooling structure was evaluated by heating tests and numerical analysis. In the result of the numerical analysis, it was shown that the surface can be cooled below 2000 K under the condition of surface heat flux of 10 MW/m 2. However, it was shown experimentally that the cooling performance gets extremely worse due to the plastic deformation of the tube when the temperature of the tube rises more than 600 K.

Application of Carbon Fiber‐Reinforced Ceramic Composites in Active Thermal Protection of Advanced Propulsion Systems: A Review

“…[13] JAXA designed an active cooling structure with metal tubes embedded in C/C composites as shown in Figure 7. [15] C/C composites are woven using 0°/90°plies. A stainless steel cooling passage is installed in the middle of the composites with a diameter of approximately 4 mm.…”

“…Water is chosen as the coolant at a flow rate of 2 L/min. According to predictions at a temperature of 3000 K (equivalent wall temperature of 1973 K and wall heat flux of 4.6 MW/m 2 ), this structure has the ability to maintain the surface temperature below 2000 K. [14][15] Based on the study above, another cooling structure combining C/C composites and the metal tube was evaluated in a rocket combustor. [16] A cylindrical C/C composite structural segment with an inner diameter of 50 mm and a length of 72 mm was designed for this experiment.…”

“…[16] Snecma Propulsion Solide (SPS) worked with NASA and Pratt & Whitney to design and fabricate an all-C/SiC composite heat transfer structure. [17] This solution applied two [15] C/SiC composite panels. Cooling channels are machined on the back side of the hot C/SiC composites panel to bring the coolant as close as possible to the hot wall surface.…”

“…carbon-reinforced composites, such as the low material tensile strength, high brittleness, and low thermal conductivity, the combined cooling structures adopting the metal channels and composites are often used in practical applications. [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] However, increasing the proportion of carbon-reinforced composites with lower density, higher specific strength and higher temperature resistance in active thermal protection structures has become the trend. The complex physicochemical processes, such as the heat transfer deterioration and enhancement, [24][25][26] heat transfer instability, [27][28] flow maldistribution, [29][30] thermal oxidative coking [31][32] and, pyrolytic coking problems, [33][34][35][36] etc., are still not clear in the composite regenerative cooling channel.…”

“…Figure 7. (a) Cross section of the regenerative cooling structure, (b) the experimental design for C/C composite with embedded stainless steel tubes [15]. …”