Design and Bench Testing of a Radiatively Heated Model for Hypersonic Fluid-Thermal-Structural Interaction Experiments

This work aims to develop a cost-efficient experimental technique for studying fluid-thermal- structural interactions (FTSI) in short-duration supersonic and hypersonic wind tunnels. The existing wind tunnel facilities are not ordinarily able to convectively heat an experimental model to representative flight conditions during their short run times. Instead the design presented here uses thermal radiation to set the model temperature prior to flow initiation. The geometry studied is a simple compliant rectangular plate with clamped-free-clamped-free boundary conditions. The proposed technique will aid in obtaining high fidelity full-field measurements of temperature, structural deformation, and in identifying the dominant flow structures. The data it will generate will be valuable for validation and development of advanced three-way coupled simulation techniques and design tools.