An Analysis of Combined Radiation-Conductive Heat Transfer During the Destruction of Porous Carbon-Ceramic Composite Material of the Thermal Protection Shield

Abstract

Carbon-ceramic composites are considered promising materials to be used in thermal protection shields of innovative descent vehicles that are currently being designed. The development of thermal shield material requires modelling its thermal-phase state under operational conditions. In this paper, physical and mathematical models are proposed for analysis of the destruction and radiation-conductive heat transfer in a porous carbon-ceramic composite material consisting of carbon fibres covered by silicon carbide. The models take into account all main physical and chemical processes of heating up and thermo-chemical destruction. A software package DMA based on the finite element method was developed, and modelling of heating up and destruction of the material was conducted. It was established that when the temperature was above 800 °С, the contribution of the radiation heat exchange became considerable. A comparison of the surface microstructures obtained through modelling and gas-dynamic testing in a plasmatron facility showed their qualitative agreement, while the mass loss did not exceed 16%.

Simulation of the curing of composite materials using microwave radiation with control of individual magnetrons

“…Traditionally, in order to equalize the temperature throughout a workpiece, it is rotated about one of the axes (about the central axis in case the detail is cylindrical). However, this approach poses new challenges, such as rotating a larger workpiece together with the mount, fixing the vacuum bag and supplying flexible vacuum hoses [9][10][11][12][13]. One possible solution to this issue may lie in readjusting the unit, so that the workpiece will remain stationary, and the uniformity of heating will be achieved due to creating traveling waves in the operating area of the unit.…”