Advanced ceramic materials development and testing

An examination was made of advanced, high performance coatings and substrates for use as thermal protection system (TPS) tiles on space reusable launch vehicles (RLV). The advanced tiles were characterized using thermal performance and rain impact testing. Thermal performance was measured using plasma arcjet and heat exposures. Rain erosion tests were used to evaluate the integrity of the coated tile surfaces. Preliminary results showed that improved impact resistance and thermal performance were attained using AETB-20 tile coated with densified-TUFI.