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Surface Temperature Measurement Fidelity In High Enthalpy Plasma Test Facilities, Owen Plante
Surface Temperature Measurement Fidelity In High Enthalpy Plasma Test Facilities, Owen Plante
Graduate College Dissertations and Theses
The classification and study of thermal protection systems (TPS) relies heavily on the accurate measurement of surface temperature. The best way to measure surface temperature in ground test facilities is through optical pyrometery due to the non intrusive nature of this method. Optical pyrometric devices use the emission of a greybody curve to calculate temperatures. These devices are left susceptible to parasitic radiation coming from the plasma generated in ground test facilities. The parasitic radiation comes from the emission lines of the test plasma in the investigation region of the devices. The parasitic radiation from the plasma and short comings …
Investigation Of Silane Coating Treatments On Phynolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator For Mars And Future Planetary Exploration, Ian Ballou
Graduate College Dissertations and Theses
The atmospheric reentry of hypersonic vehicles causes extreme compression of the gas surrounding the hypersonic vehicle due to the extremely high velocities. These compressed gases create a high enthalpy plasma environment at the surface of the vehicle and transfer thermal energy through heating to the surface of the vehicle. An ablative heat shield is used as a thermal protective systems (TPS) for many hypersonic vehicles to mitigate the effects of excessive surface heating. An example of such a TPS material for NASA Mars and Titan missions is Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA).On production vehicles, a commercially available NuSil coating is …
Silicon Carbide Fabric Catalysis Assessment In An Inductively Coupled Plasma Facility, Christopher Michael Nolan
Silicon Carbide Fabric Catalysis Assessment In An Inductively Coupled Plasma Facility, Christopher Michael Nolan
Graduate College Dissertations and Theses
Flexible thermal protection systems (FTPS) are being considered as they allow for atmospheric reentry of larger payloads. Current rigid aeroshells struggle to achieve this as they are limited by the shroud of the rocket being used. One promising material candidate for these flexible heat shields is a Hi-Nicalon silicon carbide (SiC) fabric. By utilizing the UVM 30 kW Inductively Coupled Plasma Facility, an array of experiments were performed to explore the chemical response to plasma in a variety of atmospheric conditions. The main goal of this thesis is to better understand gas surface interactions, mainly through two-photon laser-induced fluorescence (TALIF) …
Surface Volatilization Investigation Of Graphite, Mitchell Stern
Surface Volatilization Investigation Of Graphite, Mitchell Stern
Graduate College Dissertations and Theses
The re-entry vehicle posseses enough kinetic energy that it becomes hypersonic while passing throughthe upper atmosphere. This kinetic energy is quickly transferred into thermal energy as the quiescent atmosphere turned hypersonics with reference to the vehicle suddenly stagnates. Furthermore, the high energy process of generating plasma also ablates the leading edge surfaces, causing reactions between the charged gasses and the solid material composing the thermal protection system (TPS) of the aircraft. These reactions can be exothermic an d pose an additional mode of heat transfer into the body of the aircraft. Learning more about the interactions within the boundary layer …
Tools To Measure Dispersion Descriptors From Polymer Nanocomposites, Kevin Dimas Zuniga Cuellar
Tools To Measure Dispersion Descriptors From Polymer Nanocomposites, Kevin Dimas Zuniga Cuellar
Graduate College Dissertations and Theses
MaterialsMine is a new open-source data resource with the goal of supporting faster nanocomposite and metamaterials discovery and design. One goal of MaterialsMine is to provide tools that help researchers gain a better fundamental understanding of nanofiller behavior. While it is well known that the dispersion of nanofillers in nanocomposites critically controls properties, there is limited quantitative data. This thesis develops a methodology for quantitatively measuring the dispersion of polymer nanocomposites quickly and within the MaterialsMine data framework. The method processes transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images from MaterialsMine. TEM images are first pre-processed and transformed into binary images. Then the …