Modeling Tools for the Prediction of Aged TPS Material Performance

Well-characterized thermal management materials are critical for protecting hardware that is exposed to high-heat flux. Phenolic-based composites are at the forefront of thermal protection system (TPS) innovation because of their desirable ablative properties. Due to the demand for these types of systems, tools are required to determine the viability of a material from manufacture to service use. The Navy has identified a critical need to predict the effects of long-term storage on the degradation of phenolic materials and how material aging impacts mission performance. Making these predictions based on real-time data is infeasible given the rate of advancing technology, and therefore accelerated aging techniques are used to model changes to materials. The standard physical methods for accelerated aging, such as exposure to aggravated heat or oxidation, can be lengthy and expensive and are limited to what can be tested within a lab. CFD Research proposes the development of additional tools within the Hypersonic Environment Analysis Toolkit (HEAT) framework for fast-running material property aging models which will be integrated with existing transient thermal response and hypersonic TPS flight performance tools within the HEAT toolset. This will provide a method for analyzing how material aging will impact hypersonic TPS performance years into the future as a function of storage conditions. The material aging models will be anchored using accelerated aging experimentation data provided by partner Kratos SRE.