Variable Leading Edge with Adaptive Thermal Barriers and Its Heat Transfer Behaviour

Abstract

At present, the hypersonic vehicles cannot be adapted to all the flight phases perfectly, and the aerodynamic heating and lift - to - drag ratio are contradictory to the shape of the vehicles. From the perspective of aerodynamic heating, a blunt shaped body is desired to reduce the heat flow of the hypersonic vehicles. However, the lift - to - drag ratio demands a sharp leading edge. In this paper, a scheme of variable leading edge which could satisfy with both the requirements of aerodynamic heating and lift-to-drag ratio was investigated, and an adaptive thermal barrier was proposed based on the features of the variable leading edge hot structure. According to the heat flux calculated from a certain trajectory by computational fluid dynamics, the heat transfer behaviour of the variable leading edge with adaptive thermal barriers was analyzed by the finite element method. The results indicated that the temperature peak of the panel reached 1428.2 K at 400 s, temperature of the adaptive thermal barriers approached 1418.4 K at 420 s, and the temperature of the internal insulation increased to 667.86 K finally. At the end of trajectory, temperature distribution in the thermal barrier and internal insulation tended to be balanced respectively, which exhibited an excellent thermal property and a promising prospect in complex environment..