Location
Cocoa Beach, FL
Start Date
5-4-1965 8:00 AM
Description
A current need exists for improved methods in the ground testing of re-entry vehicles; it is believed that this need may soon become acute. Based on the arcjet, the present generation of re-entry simulators is limited in exhaust enthalpy, physical size and purity of exhaust plasma. An electrodeless technique of plasma production at very high power levels has been developed, however, which removes many of these restrictions. In addition, the properties of a plasma generator based on the electrodeless discharge are such that the discharge can be maintained over a very wide range in applied power and gas density, and can be electronically controlled. It is thus possible that an entire entry trajectory can be reduced to data on punched cards which are fed into a computer that electronically controls the reproduction of the entry conditions for an arbitrary trajectory in an arbitrary atmosphere at the surface of a test model. A mathematical scaling law is presented which indicates that re-entry simulation based on the electrodeless technique can be extended to the full-scale case.
An Electrodeless Technique for Full Scale Simulation of the Re-Entry Environment
Cocoa Beach, FL
A current need exists for improved methods in the ground testing of re-entry vehicles; it is believed that this need may soon become acute. Based on the arcjet, the present generation of re-entry simulators is limited in exhaust enthalpy, physical size and purity of exhaust plasma. An electrodeless technique of plasma production at very high power levels has been developed, however, which removes many of these restrictions. In addition, the properties of a plasma generator based on the electrodeless discharge are such that the discharge can be maintained over a very wide range in applied power and gas density, and can be electronically controlled. It is thus possible that an entire entry trajectory can be reduced to data on punched cards which are fed into a computer that electronically controls the reproduction of the entry conditions for an arbitrary trajectory in an arbitrary atmosphere at the surface of a test model. A mathematical scaling law is presented which indicates that re-entry simulation based on the electrodeless technique can be extended to the full-scale case.
