International Journal of Aerospace and Lightweight Structures

doi: 10.3850/S2010428612000190

Thermodynamic Behavior of a Stitching Sandwich Thermal Protection Structure

Xiangmeng Cheng, Rubing Zhang, Yongmao Pei and Daining Fang^a State Key Lab. for Turbulence and Complex Systems (LTCS), College of Engineering Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China. ^afangdn@pku.edu.cn

ABSTRACT

This paper is concerned with the thermodynamic of a stitching fiber reinforced sandwich structure, used as a Thermal Protection System (TPS) for spacecraft. Mori-Tanaka method is used to homogenize the unit cell of the structure. With the equivalent material parameters that we obtained, FEM method is employed to analyze the heat insulating and thermodynamic property. The deformation of the structure is obtained by the analytic and the finite element method. We find that the thermal expansion is the main cause of the deformation. The size of the sandwich blocks, which will be sticked on the surface of spacecraft, has great effect on the deformation of the total structure. The thermal stress distribution of the out surface of the thermal protection system will change to be very low value, when the blocks are sticked in a proper size. This will benefit the engineering application of this structure.

Keywords: Thermal Protection System (TPS), Stitching sandwich structure, Equivalent mediums method, Mori-Tanaka, Aerogel.

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