Numerical rebuilding of Expansion Tunnel Ablation Testing in terrestrial entry conditions

As part of the understanding of radiative coupling phenomena with ablation phenom- ena for hypersonic re-entry of Hayabusa or Stardust type of capsules, laboratory tests are very important. Only expansion tubes can reproduce flight conditions at these speeds but for very short testing time, which can prevent the inclusion of ablation. To overcome these difficulties, a capsule model in binary scale flight was manufactured by filling the surface of a pure pre-heated phenolic resin in situ on firing, in the test section of the X2 expansion tube University of Queensland. The numerical reconstruction of the tests is presented here to a terrestrial re-entry condition, with simplified models of radiation and ablation. Flow simulations are performed with Eilmer3 and CFD ++ codes, and modeling assumptions are outlined. The results were compared with experimental measurements in order to validate the modeling, including heat flow estimates on the vehicle, with or with- out ablative protection.