Applications of infrared measurement technique in hypersonic facilities

For the design of thermal protection systems for future space vehicles it is necessary to localize and quantify the thermal loads due to convective surface heating. This paper presents tunnel experiments which demonstrate how surface heating due to interaction phenomena have been visualized and measured by infrared thermovision. An impinging shock wave on a laminar boundary layer of a flat plate and an axial corner configuration under 20° angle of attack were studied in a 60 em hypersonic blow down facility of DLR Cologne at Mach number 8.7 for laminar flow conditions. In addition to the shock interaction study the capability of the infrared technique as diagnostic tool for short duration measurements was tested in the shock tunnel TH2 at the Stoßwellenlabor RWTH Aachen.