Investigation of the Flow Structure Within an Ablative Thermal Protection System

The objective of the proposed research is to generate experimental data that will provide information which can improve modeling capabilities of the flow within ablative thermal protection surfaces. This will be achieved by conducting high quality experiments using internal thermal protection system geometries produced using micro-tomography. Through refractive index matching, it will be possible to measure the internal velocity within the complex structure. Information from these experiments will then be used to determine parametric quantities, such as permeability, which can be applied to the modeling of pyrolysis gas flow within ablative thermal protection system.