Wind Tunnel Aero-Heating and Material Destruction Tests for Improved Debris Re-Entry Analysis

During the S/C re-entry destruction fragments of irregular geometry are released. One finds spheres, boxes and cylinders, which may be hollow and which are flying in tumbling motion. The experimental database on such bodies is limited. Therefore heat transfer test have been conducted in the hypersonic vacuum wind tunnel V2G of DLR Göttingen. With a special model support also rotating models could be tested.Another study objective was the thermal destruction of selected materials and CFRP components under simulated re-entry heat loads. In use are solid CFRP structures, honeycombs with CFRP facesheets, or thin walled titanium tanks with external CFRP reinforcements. The destruction of multilayer structures may be completely different to solid thick CFRP. Therefore samples of 12 CFRP and CFRP honeycombs have been tested in the LBK 2 arc jet facility of DLR.