Empirical Study of the Lightweight Ablator Series for Transfer Vehicle Systems (LATS)

For protecting the spacecraft against the severe heating during the atmospheric reentry, the ablative materials are commonly used as thermal shield. Recently, a new lightweight CFRP called the lightweight ablator series for transfer vehicle systems (LATS) was developed. Since LATS contains a resin that undergoes thermal decomposition by heating, classical methods for estimating recession cannot be applied to them. In the present paper, empirical correlations for the surface recession rate were determined. The paper presents a new curve-fit exponential equation for estimating the surface recession rate of the carbon-phenolic ablation in air, by taking into consideration its dependency with the surface temperature and density, using the measured data from the high-enthalpy heating facilities of the German Aerospace Center (DLR, Germany), Japan Ultra High Temperature Material Center (Jutem, Japan) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA, Japan).30th International Symposium on Space Technology and Science (ISTS), July 4th-July 10th, 2015, Kobe-Hyogo, Japa