Ablative thermal protection systems have experienced renewed interest in the past decade owing to the retirement of NASA's Space Shuttle fleet and the US presidential mandate to develop technologies that enable humans to explore space beyond low Earth orbit. Blunt body architecture for spacecraft and the use of ablators for thermal protection systems returned as the primary choice in mission planning. This review addresses current progress in modernizing predictive tools for ablative material response. Current theory development leverages progress made in the theory of flows in porous media. This development, combined with progress in experimental techniques and high-end computing, is enabling the development of 3D macroscale models with realistic closure coefficients derived from direct numerical simulations of 3D microscale geometries of actual materials. While flight data quantifying ablative material response remain sparse, the next decade will be one of exploration in which heatshield instrumented spacecraft will provide crucial flight data for refining and validating closure models.

中文翻译：

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烧蚀热防护系统中的流动力学


由于美国宇航局航天飞机机队的退役以及美国总统授权开发使人类能够探索近地轨道以外太空的技术，烧蚀热防护系统在过去十年中重新引起了人们的兴趣。航天器的钝体结构和热保护系统的烧蚀器的使用重新成为任务规划的主要选择。本综述讨论了烧蚀材料反应预测工具现代化的当前进展。当前的理论发展利用了多孔介质流动理论的进展。这一发展与实验技术和高端计算的进步相结合，使得 3D 宏观模型的开发成为可能，该模型具有来自实际材料 3D 微观几何形状的直接数值模拟的真实闭合系数。虽然量化烧蚀材料响应的飞行数据仍然很少，但未来十年将是一项探索，其中装有隔热罩仪表的航天器将为完善和验证闭合模型提供关键的飞行数据。