Film cooling has been selected for the thermal protection of the composite nozzle extension of the J-2X engine which is currently being developed for the second stage of NASA’s next generation launch vehicle, the Ares I rocket. However,several challenges remain in order to achieve effective film cooling of the nozzle extension and to ensure its safe operation. The extreme complexity of the flow (three-dimensionalwakes, lateral flows, vorticity, and flow separation) makes predicting film cooling performance difficult. There is also a dearth of useful supersonic film cooling data available for engineers to use in engine design and a lack of maturity of CFD tools to quantitatively match supersonic film cooling data. This dissertation advances the state of the art in film cooling by presenting semi-empirical analytical models which improve the basic physical understanding and prediction of the effects of pressure gradients, compressibility and density gradients on film cooling effectiveness. These models are shown to correlate most experimental data well and to resolve several conflicts in the open literature. The core-to-coolant stream velocity ratio, R, and the Kays acceleration parameter, KP, are identified as the critical paramete...

Various plasma wind tunnels have been built for developing reusable space transportation systems and space probes entering the atmospheres of celestial bodies. All together they cover almost the whole reentry trajectory of a space craft. They generate continuous plasma flows of high specific enthalpy and velocity with thermal or magnetoplasmadynamic generators. Plasma wind tunnels are used for:(1) Development and qualification of radiation and ablative cooling materials and thermal protection systems (2) Validation of numerical codes for reentry prediction (3) Development and qualification of reentry measurement devices