Aerothermodynamic Testing of the Crew Exploration Vehicle at Mach 6 and Mach 10

An experimental wind-tunnel program is being conducted in support of a NASA wide effort to develop a Space Shuttle replacement and to support the agency's long-term objective of returning to the moon and Mars. This paper documents experimental measurements made on several scaled ceramic heat transfer models of the proposed Project Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle. The experimental data highlighted in this paper will be used to assess numerical tools that will be used to generate the flight aerothermodynamic database. Global heat transfer images and centerline heat transfer distributions were obtained over a range of freestream Reynolds numbers and angles of attack with the phosphor thermography technique. Temperature data were measured on the forebody and afterbody and were used to compute the heating on the vehicle as well as the boundary-layer state on the forebody surface. Several model support configurations were assessed to minimize potential aftbody support interference. Although naturally fully developed turbulent levels were not obtained on the forebody, the use of boundary-layer trips generated fully developed turbulent flow. Laminar and turbulent computational results are shown to be in good agreement with the data. In addition, the ability of the global phosphor thermography method to provide quantitative heating measurements in the low-temperature environment of the capsule base region was assessed and the lack of significant model support hardware influence on heating was shown.