From the tragedy of the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003 to the now-routine return of commercial spacecraft, heat shields—formally called thermal protection systems—are critical for protecting vehicles from the intense heat and friction of atmospheric reentry or traveling at many times the speed of sound.
Now, a team of engineers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed ways to rapidly evaluate new thermal protection materials for hypersonic vehicles. Their three-year research project combined computer modeling, laboratory experiments and flight testing to better understand how heat shields behave under extreme temperatures and pressures, and to predict their performance much faster than before.
Hypersonic flight means traveling at speeds of at least five times faster than the speed of sound, or more than 3,800 miles per hour. Other vehicles, such as ballistic missiles, can travel this fast, but hypersonic vehicles are far more maneuverable and unpredictable, making them harder to intercept. Unlike reusable spacecraft, the thermal protection systems used on U.S. hypersonic missiles—which solely deliver conventional weapons—are designed for a single use.
