Thermal-durability Evaluation of Inflatable Structure for a Deployable Aeroshell Using ICP Heater

Abstract

In recent years, a number of sample return mission and planetary exploration probes have been discussed and proposed. Our group has developed a new atmospheric re-entry vehicle with a membrane aeroshell to increase the variety of these missions. However, there are still several important technical problems to be addressed to apply the membrane aeroshell to an actual mission. One of them is evaluation of the thermal durability of the inflatable structure. The thermal durability of the inflatable structure was evaluated using a 10 kW class inductively coupled plasma (ICP) heater. This ICP heater can produce a plasma flow with a high enthalpy and relatively low heat flux of about 120 kW/m², which is a suitable condition for the heating test of the membrane aeroshell. The tests proved that the inflatable structure, made of polyimide film, silicon rubber adhesive, ZYLON textile, and alumina felt, maintains the gas tight in the plasma flow with a heat flux of 120 kW/m² in 300 s. This layering structure is proposed as a potential candidate for use in actual flight vehicles.