Development of Thermal Protection System for Re-Usable Launch Vehicle

The Thermal Protection System of a Reusable Launch Vehicle is the hardware that is used to guarantee the structural integrity of aircraft from various forms of heat sources such as Atmospheric Friction, Engine Exhaust and Hot Particles. Exploring our nature, one of the most basic substances that could be used to overcome this problem is sand. It has the capacity to sustain extremely high temperatures during the day and frigid temperatures during nights. Using this science as the basis new technologies have come up with the idea of Thermal Protection Systems. In this review paper we would be discussing about various methods used for development of Thermal Protection. With a deep dive into Material Sciences, the paper deals with Metallic TPS which consists of superalloy honeycomb. This technology deals with improvements for more efficient internal insulation and a simpler light weight configuration. The second part would deal with soft objects, which is developed and used to assign an almost arbitrary distribution of insulation materials over vehicle surface. Analysis was done by implementing one or multidimensional models when TPS was subjected to low speed impact, hypervelocity impact, rain corrosion testing and arcjet exposure.