TECHNOLOGY Heat Insulation Analysis of an Aluminum Honeycomb Sandwich Structure

Heat-transfer has been performed on a sandwich thermal protection system (TPS) for future flight vehicles. The sandwich structures are built from thin walled metal sheets. These structures as a part of the airframe outer cover provide thermal protection to the interior parts mounted inside the vehicle. The temperature protection materials used for sandwich structures should have high strength even at the elevated temperatures. It is easier to simulate the 1500 C temperature on the Aluminum sandwich structures and find the temperature gradient across the sandwich depth. Though the experiment was done on hexagonal cells honeycomb, the ANSYS analyses have been done for both square cell sandwich panel and hexagonal honeycomb panel for comparison. Experiments are done on using Al alloy honeycomb sandwich panels and the validations of experimental work using ANSYS analysis have been performed. ANSYS modeling analysis have been done for both, the square and hexagonal honeycomb sandwich panels of the Al alloy. This paper focus the heat transfer analysis and in exploring the ways to reduce the heat transfer effect with the methods mentioned above, which could be effectively used for flight vehicle applications. Keywords- Hexagonal core, Square core, aluminum panel, Adhesive, FEA