Experimental Investigations of the Flow Field around a Generic Re-entry Capsule in HIEST

Viscous hypersonic flows with shock waves are of great importance in aerospace engineering applications. Acquisition of detailed experimental data like drag and heat transfer over hypersonic bodies are indispensable for the development of reliable space vehicles and thermal protection systems (TPS), and also for the validation and progress of numerical estimation. In the present study, a blunted double cone model (heat model) was designed and manufactured as the aerodynamic configuration design of re-entry capsules. The aim of this experiment is to obtain detailed data of heat transfer and pressure distribution as well as the flow structures over the heat model. Coaxial thermocouples and pressure sensors are mounted at the frontal and base region, and surface temperature and wall pressure are measured.