A model for thermal protection ablative material with local thermal non-equilibrium and thermal radiation mechanisms

Abstract Novel resin-based ablative materials are manufactured for the Thermal Protection System (TPS) of hypersonic aircraft in recent years to adapt more extreme aerothermodynamic environment. The establishment of theoretical model and simulation method for accurately predicting material's responses can guide design of TPS and significantly reduce Research and Development (R&D) cycle and cost. In order to solve the problem of inaccurate material response calculated by the heritage models, which is caused by the new mechanisms involved in new materials. On the basis of heritage physical and chemical mechanisms for resin-based ablative materials, this study further introduces the mechanisms of the local thermal non-equilibrium and thermal radiation, and a developed thermal-fluid-ablation coupled theoretical model is established. The coupled model is numerically solved by writing computer codes. After completing the verification of the model and simulation codes, the influences of the new mechanisms on the performance of ablative material are analyzed. The results show that the effect of local thermal non-equilibrium and thermal radiation cannot be ignored for current ablative materials, in which the key factors are the pore size and porosity.