Experimental Study on Cooling Efficiency of Hypersonic Optical Window

Abstract

The cooling effectiveness of optical window influences the imaging quality of hypersonic vehicles. This study focuses on the supersonic film cooling efficiency on the optical window of a blunt cone in hypersonic flow. The experiments were conducted in a gun tunnel equipped with a Mach 8 nozzle providing a total pressure and temperature of 9 MPa and 900 K respectively. Three tangential 2D nozzles with different combinations of slot heights and Mach numbers were designed to detect the film cooling length under different injection pressures. The heat flux on window surface was measured by Thin Film Gauges and the flow field was monitored by schlieren technique. When the jet pressure matched the mainstream, the window was completely cooled, and the minimum mass flow rate was achieved when the slot height was 5mm and the jet Mach number was 2.5. If the pressure ratio of jet continues to increase, the heat flux density could be furtherly reduced, but the cooling efficiency of unit coolant mass flow decreased significantly. The data correlation results showed that the cooling efficiency presented a nonlinear relationship of second order polynomial with (x/Sh)λ-0.8 , and the effective cooling length of film was positively correlated with the cooling mass flow ratio (λ) and slot height of the nozzle. Besides, the increase of jet pressure resulted in thickening the mixing layer, which enhanced the heat insulation effect and reduced the heat flux as a result.

Keywords

• optical window
• supersonic film
• injection nozzles
• cooling efficiency