Low-Cost Production of High-Performance, High-Temperature Heat Flux Sensors

The Air Force tests high-speed flight structures in high-temperature wind tunnel tests to characterize performance and guide improvements during flight vehicle development. Heat flux measurements at many locations on the test article are a critical part of the aerothermal test data, but the number of measurement locations and/or number of tests is currently limited by the very high cost of permanently installed heat flux sensors that are available with suitably small size, high temperature range, and fast response time. Creare proposes to develop (1) a small-scale heat flux sensor design that provides high?temperature capability and fast response time, and (2) a sensor manufacturing approach with dramatically lower production cost. The low-cost sensors that will result from this SBIR development program will enable lower-cost, faster development of advanced Air Force flight vehicles and lower?cost, more prevalent use of heat flux sensors in a wide range of high-temperature research and development efforts, industrial processes, and technologies. In this Phase I project, Creare plans to advance our proposed baseline sensor design and manufacturing approach, develop preliminary proof-of-concept prototype sensor elements to demonstrate the basic manufacturing processes, and test the prototype sensor elements to demonstrate their functionality to high temperatures. The results will prove the feasibility of our sensor design and fabrication approach and justify funding Phase II, in which we plan to further tune the sensor design and manufacturing process, produce batches of prototype sensors, calibrate and test the sensors for comparison to legacy sensors, and establish a path for future sensor commercialization.