Research on the thermal corridor of a hypersonic vehicle

The establishment of a reasonable physical model and an effective solution scheme for the thermal corridor is very important to thermal protection structure design, trajectory selection, aerodynamic configuration optimization design, etc. The concept of a thermal corridor for a hypersonic vehicle was analyzed and a physical model was proposed in this paper. Furthermore, the governing equations and the corresponding algorithm for the thermal corridor were discussed. The envelopes of the height–velocity curves at typical positions of the vehicle X43 were calculated, the characteristics of the thermal corridor were summarized, the effect of the thermal protection material on the thermal corridor was discussed, and the emission coefficient of the thermal protection material was defined. The results indicate that the thermal corridor depends on the emission coefficient of the surface material, the flow conditions, and turbulence transition position. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res, 37(4): 218–223, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/htj.20203