High Temperature Inflation Hoses and Ports for Next Generation Inflatable Heat Shields

The SOTA HIAD inflation hoses and port components currently limit the scalability of overall HIAD design as they significantly choke the maximum allowable gas flow. The proposed innovation, increasing the scale of these components, would result in at least a 2.5x increase in the hydraulic diameter of the hoses, allowing a far greater mass flow rate. In PH I, JBE developed manufacturing methods for these components. In PH II, the constructions will be optimized, and integration methods into HIAD tori will be developed. To determine the optimal configuration of new components, they will be tested with custom equipment designed and fabricated under this contract specifically to simulate the physical and thermal stresses experienced by the inflatable structure during packing, inflation, and atmospheric re-entry.