Experimental research on thermal-insulation performance under high-temperature/oxidation and time-varying environment

For the particular characteristics that hypersonic vehicles are faced with extreme aerodynamic heating environment during the flight, their body shells are situated in one-sided heating condition and surface temperatures are non-linear time-varying, a self-designed radiation and one-sided heating test apparatus is established to perform the thermal-insulation performance test for thermal protection materials of hypersonic vehicles under extremely high-temperature/oxidation environments up to 1700℃ in this paper. Meanwhile, the experimental research on thermal-insulation performance of a light-weight ceramic material specimen and a new type of composite structure composed of ceramic and nanophase materials under high-temperature/oxidation environments up to 1700℃ is carried out. The comparative analysis of the thermal insulation performance of various materials and their different combination models is performed to find the highly efficient performance scheme. It is found that the thermal-insulation performance of the composite thermal protection structure composed of ceramic and nanophase materials is increased approximately by 50% compared with that of the light-weight ceramic material specimen. Additionally, non-linear time-varying thermal environments with extremely high temperatures are generated and the thermal insulation performance tests are performed in this paper. The present work provides an important test method for the thermal protection design of hypersonic vehicles through the establishment and application of an extreme high-temperature/oxidation test system for creating one-sided heating, time-varying thermal environments.