Rear Infrared Thermography in Heat Fluxes Determination on Hypersonics Vehicles

Due to agressive external conditions during an hypersonic flight, parameters such as external wall temperature are not easily measurable with the usual approach. Hence this study develops a promising in flight measurements methodology to estimate heat fluxes on space vehicle external surface, in order to improve the aerodynamic models. One important application will be the design of the thermal protections. THEFA technique consists in using rear infrared thermography measurements and an unsteady inverse heat transfer model ([1]). The aim is to determine the heat fluxes received by the external surface of the vehicle by using the temporal evolution of its internal face thermal map.