Reduction of the Hypersonic Heat Flux Behavior on Catalytic Walls

This paper is pointing out simple methods to take into account the wall finite catalycity when sizing the Thermal Protection System of a Hypersonic Re-entry Vehicle. It is recalled that the heat flux is S-shaped in function of the catalytic recombination coefficient. Actually, significant examples indicate that the variations of the flux between its extreme values have a self-similar behavior in function of the reduced catalytic mass flow rate. This property can be used to model the effect of the wall catalycity when the heat fluxes on nonand fully catalytic walls are known.