Rain Erosion Modeling for Hypersonic Thermal Protection System (TPS) and Structures

Presently, no standard rain erosion reference (code, document(s), database, etc) exists for system designers and engineers to predict the material behavior of candidate materials for sub-sonic, sonic, and hypersonic mission profiles. Historically, individual companies have taken a shoot and look approach to this subject, and relied on past performance for flight predictions. Within the community, an attempt has been made to couple the material response to projected media, however, unfortunately, this information quickly becomes proprietary and hence, does not exist in the public media. This objective of this proposal is to develop coupled shock, impact, and material response model of a system during a rain event. Researchers will draw on historical data, recent sled test articles, and international publications made recently available to address the associated variables and develop the necessary numerical models. Sub-scale, and ultimately, sled tests will be conducted on several candidate materials and their performance will be compared / contrasted with the numerical model.