Travel through the Earth’s atmosphere
subjects hypersonic vehicles and crew to extreme conditions of
Pressure, and stress. In order to withstand these extreme
conditions, extensive study and testing of material behavior, heat
fluxes and aerodynamics among many other areas are required.
With a grant from NASA the 2006-2007 Heat Flux Simulator Senior
Design Team will engineer an apparatus to plot heat flux. Heating
lamps when arranged in various configurations will create certain
heat flux (flow of heat across a given area). NASA will be using
the apparatus for mapping heat fluxes to better understand heat flux
when testing materials.
