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Active TRL 2 (started at 2, targeting 3)
During atmospheric entry, descent, and landing (EDL), spacecraft are exposed to extreme thermal environments and harsh conditions, necessitating the use of thermal protection systems (TPS). Predicting interplanetary entry environments has constituted a major challenge when designing a TPS to fit a stringent set of mission requirements, leading to predominantly conservative design margins. Within the past decade, increasing adoption of thermal measurement systems embedded within the TPS has generated valuable EDL environment data, leading to lower uncertainties in entry environment estimates. Heat flux sensors embedded in the TPS, however, remain hampered by non-favorable heat transfer mechanisms which negatively influence the measurement, necessitating the use of auxiliary simulations with entry trajectory predictions for accurate reconstructions. In addressing TA-9.4.6 (Instrumentation and Health Monitoring) and TA-14.3.3 (TPS Sensors and Measurement Systems) outlined in the 2015 NASA Technology Roadmaps, the proposed research aims to develop a framework to (1) recover accurate localized measurements from embedded heat flux sensors and (2) expand the capabilities of distributed thermal measurement networks to full-field thermal environment reconstructions. Green’s function formulations will be pursued to efficiently model the thermal response of the heat flux sensor and surrounding TPS medium. The inclusion of nearby temperature sensors into the measurement reconstruction formulation will allow for recovery of the TPS surface heat flux purely using on-board instrumentation. Statistical Universal Kriging algorithms will be developed to enable reconstruction of the global EDL thermal environment by leveraging networks of thermal sensors distributed throughout the TPS, leading to more precise identification of boundary layer transition, surface heating augmentation, and flow separation. Through close collaboration with NASA EDL teams, these technological advancements will lead to the development of safer and more efficient TPS, narrower interplanetary EDL uncertainty margins, and will provide valuable physical insight into the underlying aerothermodynamics of high-speed entry flows.
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