Investigation of thermal protection system by forward-facing cavity and opposing jet combinatorial configuration

This paper focuses on the usage of the forward-facing cavity and opposing jet combinatorial configuration as the thermal protection system (TPS) for hypersonic vehicles. A hemisphere-cone nose-tip with the combinatorial configuration is investigated numerically in hypersonic free stream. Some numerical results are validated by experiments. The flow field parameters, aerodynamic force and surface heat flux distribution are obtained. The influence of the opposing jet stagnation pressure on cooling efficiency of the combinatorial TPS is discussed. The detailed numerical results show that the aerodynamic heating is reduced remarkably by the combinatorial system. The recirculation region plays a pivotal role for the reduction of heat flux. The larger the stagnation pressure of opposing jet is, the more the heating reduction is. This kind of combinatorial system is suitable to be the TPS for the high-speed vehicles which need long-range and long time flight.