Abstract
Spacecraft employs heat shield as protection from high heat during reentry into Earth atmosphere. However, current heat shields are labor intensive to manufacture and cost prohibitive. Additive manufacturing technology or 3D printing allows rapid manufacturing, reduced cost and design flexibility. Hence, a new thermal protection system (TPS) was proposed to take advantage of 3D printing. The proposed system employs a 3D printed Carbon Fiber/Polyether Ether Ketone (CF/PEEK) composite as a thermal protection material and structure member. The durability of the TPS in LEO was evaluated by exposing test samples to different number of thermal cycles and ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Tensile testing was carried out to evaluate the tensile strength and Young’s modulus of the proposed TPS. The proposed TPS was also examined using an arc-heated wind tunnel to evaluate its thermal protection performance and thermal response. Tensile and are heating test results showed no significant degradation in mechanical properties and thermal protection performance after exposure to thermal cycle and UV radiation. In addition, the TPS achieved comparable thermal performance to existing ablators while maintaining good mechanical properties.
