Numerical Study of the Influence of Coupling Interface Emissivity on Aerogel Metal Thermal Protection Performance

For aerogels in metal thermal protection system (MTPS), radiative heat transfer will participate in the thermal transport process. Therefore, the influence of the emissivity of the coupling interface between metal and aerogels on thermal insulation performance is considered an important research focus. In this paper, CFD numerical simulation is performed to study the influence of emissivity on the performance with different extinction coefficients at different boundary temperatures. The finite volume method and the discrete ordinate method are used to solve the govern equations. The results show that when the boundary temperatures are 600 K and 2100 K, the extinction coefficient is 50 m(−1), and the reduction percentage of the effective thermal conductivity with an emissivity of 0.2 can be up to 47.5% and 69.8%, compared to the system with an emissivity of 1. Thus, the reduction in emissivity has a good effect on the thermal insulation performance of the MTPS at a higher boundary temperature for materials with small extinction coefficients.