Reliability Increase of Base Heating Prediction and Thermal Protection Methodology for Launch Vehicle Upper-Stage

Abstract

During spacecraft missions in some countries all over the world, a number of failures have been observed that were due to the lower reliability of thermal protection of launch vehicles, so the reliability of base heating prediction and thermal protection is very important for successful emissions. The thermal protection of launch vehicles is usually carried out according to the base heating prediction. The base heating environment is a complicated combination of exhaust plume radiation, reversed plume flow convective heating, and engine nozzle radiation. In this paper, the numerical analysis of base heating is performed to improve the precision of the predictive analysis, and then the flow is modeled using a two-dimensional, Reynolds averaged, and compressible Naive-Stokes equations and DSMC for a chemically frozen mixture gas. After that, the radiation is modeled by using RMC. On the basis of this elaborate base heating prediction, the weaknesses of the thermal protection can be found and the elaborate thermal protection can be realized, so the reliability of base heating prediction and thermal protection methodology can be increased.