Temperature and Heat Flux Measurement on Hot Models in Short-Duration Facilities

An electrical preheating technique applied to a carbon-based model in an impulse facility has previously demonstrated surface temperatures around 2500 K, but the measurement of heat flux at such elevated surface temperatures was not previously achieved. A technique for fast-response surface temperature measurement of an electrically preheated carbon-phenolic model using an indium gallium arsenide detector with in situ calibration via a visible/near-infrared spectrometer is assessed through application in a short-duration cold-flow hypersonic wind tunnel. The method is reliable: the scatter in temperatures determined from successive acquisitions of the spectrometer data had a standard deviation of 3 K at a mean temperature of about 1500 K; the standard deviation of the Indium gallium arsenide detector results from the visible/near-infrared spectrometer data was 11 K at a temperature of about 1100 K after the termination of the hypersonic flow. The surface temperature history from the Indium gallium arsenide detector was analyzed using a one-dimensional transient heat conduction model to deduce the surface heat flux. Good agreement with an engineering correlation for stagnation point heat flux is demonstrated; however, uncertainties are large (+/- 33%), as the thermal properties of the particular carbon-phenolic material were not available. The method is suitable for application in impulse facilities, but the effusivity (root rho ck) for the heat shield material will need to be accurately defined for reliable deduction of surface heat flux.