Thermal insulating performance of thermal protection system with sandwich structure based on Al2O3/SiC composites aerogels

The thermal protection system (TPS) are an indispensable component of aerospace vehicles that can withstand harsh aerothermal conditions during the reentry process. Recently, the sandwich structures of TPS have been widely used to meet the development trend of structure-performance integrated design. In this study, a TPS with a sandwich structure based on Al2O3 aerogels reinforced by SiC nanowire are proposed. The Al2O3/SiC composites aerogels are synthesized via the low-cost method, including sol-gel, freeze-casting and high-temperature treatments processes. The microstructure, phase composition, thermal insulation and compressive resistance of composite aerogels at different SiC nanowires content are investigated in detail. The resulting Al2O3/SiC composites aerogels, exhibiting better compressive strength and thermal stability with the increase of SiC nanowires content, achieve the purpose of being an excellent thermal insulation material of TPS at high temperature. The characterization of thermal insulating performances of the TPS are also evaluated by the oxyacetylene torch testing. The TPS shows extraordinary high-temperature resistance, and the average linear ablation rate and mass ablation rate are 0.0032 mm/s and 0.005 g/s, respectively, which can satisfy the requirement of TPS for aerospace vehicles under ultra-high temperature conditions.