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An open carbon–phenolic ablator for scientific exploration

Space exploration missions rely on ablative heat shields for the thermal protection of spacecraft during atmospheric entry flights. While dedicated research is needed for future missions, the scientific community has limited access to ablative materials typically used in aerospace. In this paper, we...

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Autores principales: Poloni, Erik, Grigat, Felix, Eberhart, Martin, Leiser, David, Sautière, Quentin, Ravichandran, Ranjith, Delahaie, Sara, Duernhofer, Christian, Hoerner, Igor, Hufgard, Fabian, Loehle, Stefan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10423272/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37573464
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-40351-x
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author Poloni, Erik
Grigat, Felix
Eberhart, Martin
Leiser, David
Sautière, Quentin
Ravichandran, Ranjith
Delahaie, Sara
Duernhofer, Christian
Hoerner, Igor
Hufgard, Fabian
Loehle, Stefan
author_facet Poloni, Erik
Grigat, Felix
Eberhart, Martin
Leiser, David
Sautière, Quentin
Ravichandran, Ranjith
Delahaie, Sara
Duernhofer, Christian
Hoerner, Igor
Hufgard, Fabian
Loehle, Stefan
author_sort Poloni, Erik
collection PubMed
description Space exploration missions rely on ablative heat shields for the thermal protection of spacecraft during atmospheric entry flights. While dedicated research is needed for future missions, the scientific community has limited access to ablative materials typically used in aerospace. In this paper, we report the development of the HEFDiG Ablation-Research Laboratory Experiment Material (HARLEM), a carbon–phenolic ablator designed to supply the need for ablative materials in laboratory experiments. HARLEM is manufactured using polyacrylonitrile-based carbon fiber preforms and a simplified processing route for phenolic impregnation. We characterized the thermal protection performance of HARLEM in arcjet experiments conducted in the plasma wind tunnel PWK1 of the Institute of Space Systems at the University of Stuttgart. We assessed the performance of the new material by measuring surface recession rate and temperature using photogrammetry and thermography setups during the experiments, respectively. Our results show that HARLEM’s thermal protection performance is comparable to legacy carbon–phenolic ablators that have been validated in different arcjet facilities or in-flight, as demonstrated by calculations of the effective heat of ablation and scanning electron microscopy of as-produced samples. In-house manufacturing of carbon–phenolic ablators enables the addition of embedded diagnostics to ablators, allowing for the acquisition of data on internal pressure and more sophisticated pyrolysis analysis techniques.
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spelling pubmed-104232722023-08-14 An open carbon–phenolic ablator for scientific exploration Poloni, Erik Grigat, Felix Eberhart, Martin Leiser, David Sautière, Quentin Ravichandran, Ranjith Delahaie, Sara Duernhofer, Christian Hoerner, Igor Hufgard, Fabian Loehle, Stefan Sci Rep Article Space exploration missions rely on ablative heat shields for the thermal protection of spacecraft during atmospheric entry flights. While dedicated research is needed for future missions, the scientific community has limited access to ablative materials typically used in aerospace. In this paper, we report the development of the HEFDiG Ablation-Research Laboratory Experiment Material (HARLEM), a carbon–phenolic ablator designed to supply the need for ablative materials in laboratory experiments. HARLEM is manufactured using polyacrylonitrile-based carbon fiber preforms and a simplified processing route for phenolic impregnation. We characterized the thermal protection performance of HARLEM in arcjet experiments conducted in the plasma wind tunnel PWK1 of the Institute of Space Systems at the University of Stuttgart. We assessed the performance of the new material by measuring surface recession rate and temperature using photogrammetry and thermography setups during the experiments, respectively. Our results show that HARLEM’s thermal protection performance is comparable to legacy carbon–phenolic ablators that have been validated in different arcjet facilities or in-flight, as demonstrated by calculations of the effective heat of ablation and scanning electron microscopy of as-produced samples. In-house manufacturing of carbon–phenolic ablators enables the addition of embedded diagnostics to ablators, allowing for the acquisition of data on internal pressure and more sophisticated pyrolysis analysis techniques. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-08-12 /pmc/articles/PMC10423272/ /pubmed/37573464 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-40351-x Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Poloni, Erik
Grigat, Felix
Eberhart, Martin
Leiser, David
Sautière, Quentin
Ravichandran, Ranjith
Delahaie, Sara
Duernhofer, Christian
Hoerner, Igor
Hufgard, Fabian
Loehle, Stefan
An open carbon–phenolic ablator for scientific exploration
title An open carbon–phenolic ablator for scientific exploration
title_full An open carbon–phenolic ablator for scientific exploration
title_fullStr An open carbon–phenolic ablator for scientific exploration
title_full_unstemmed An open carbon–phenolic ablator for scientific exploration
title_short An open carbon–phenolic ablator for scientific exploration
title_sort open carbon–phenolic ablator for scientific exploration
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10423272/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37573464
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-40351-x
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