heat shield testing

How are thermal protection systems tested on the ground? By directing
superheated air at various temperatures, pressures, and durations to
simulate a re-entry environment?

In article ,
Bill Bogen wrote:
How are thermal protection systems tested on the ground? By directing
superheated air at various temperatures, pressures, and durations to
simulate a re-entry environment?

More or less, yes. It's difficult to do entirely satisfactorily. The
range of conditions is very wide and some of them are difficult to
reproduce on the ground. Typically it's not too hard to reproduce *one*
condition, e.g. heating rate, but the combination is very difficult -- for
example, reproducing the heating rate with combustion heat will typically
give unrepresentative gas composition and properties. So you use the best
simulation you can, or the best several simulations, and fill in the gaps
with some combination of theory, past experience, safety margins, and
crossed fingers.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |