A fundamental design of using thermophotovoltaic (TPV) system to convert the huge aerodynamic heat into electricity during the reentry process was described. The influences of heat conducting way, spectral filter and selective radiating surface on the system performance were analyzed in detail. The results showed that as a thermal conducting component, SiC is better than ablation material, with more electricity output but a larger cooling load, and that the adoption of spectral filter and selective radiating surface could lower the power output to some extent, yet diminish the cooling load prominently.
YE Hong & GENG Xue Department of Thermal Science and Energy Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230027, China
Low-density closed-cell aluminum foam is promising to be used as load-bearing and thermal insulation components. It is necessary to systematically study its thermal expansion performance. In this work, linear thermal expansion coefficient(LTEC) of the closed-cell aluminum foam of different density was measured in the temperature range of 100–500 °C. X-ray fluorescence was used to analyze elemental composition of the cell wall material. Phase transition characteristics were analyzed with X-ray diffraction and differential scanning calorimetry. LTEC of the closed-cell aluminum foam was found to be dominated by its cell wall property and independent of its density. Particularly, two anomalies were found and experimentally analyzed. Due to the release of the residual tensile stress, the LTEC declined and even exhibited negative values. After several thermal cycles, the residual stress vanished. With temperature higher than 300 °C,instantaneous LTEC showed hysteresis, which should result from the redistribution of some residual hydrogen in the Ti2Al20 Ca lattice.
Crashworthiness of cellular metals with a linear density gradient was analyzed by using cell-based finite element models and shock models. Mechanisms of energy absorption and deformation of graded cellular metals were explored by shock wave propagation analysis. Results show that a positive density gradient is a good choice for protecting the impacting object because it can meet the crashworthiness requirements of high energy absorption, stable impact resistance and low peak stress.
