A Study on Ablative Characteristics of Needle-Punching C/C in High-Enthalpy Plasma and High-Velocity Flame Environments

Thermal Protection System (TPS) is applied to space vehicles exposed to aerodynamic heating condition during re-entry. It is necessary to evaluate ablative characteristics of thermal protection materials using ground testing facilities simulating the re-entry condition before flight tests. In this work, ablation tests of Needle-Punching Carbon/Carbon (NPCC) materials were conducted using an Arc-heated Wind Tunnel (AWT) and a High-Velocity Oxygen Fuel (HVOF) system. Compared with the AWT results, the surface temperatures of the HVOF tests rapidly reached at the steady-state condition, which induced a large amount of recession. In addition, it was confirmed that the surface roughness increased due to a high mass flux of the HVOF flow. Consequently, the correlation of ablative characteristics between the high-enthalpy plasma and high-velocity flame environments was validated in the range of the tested heat fluxes.