Feasibility study of different cooling techniques in a ground fast cooling simulation device.

In this paper, a ground fast cooling simulation device is designed for the thermal testing of the materials and parts on high speed flight vehicles. Experimental investigation is performed to validate the effectiveness of the design and feasibilities of 4 different cooling techniques with both Ti alloy and C/SiC test pieces. The results show that air impingement cooling is the most feasible cooling method because it offers high cooling rates and it’s compatible with Ti alloy and C/SiC. LN and water jet impingement cooling prove to be unfeasible mainly due to the uncontrollability and destruction of thermocouples, respectively. Water spray cooling, however, is found to be feasible only for Ti alloy test pieces and destructions of C/SiC test pieces are observed after the experiment. Based on SEM images of the microstructure, oxidation effects of water spray cooling on C/SiC are briefly analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]