Carbon/carbon (C/C) materials, heat-resistant rigid ceramic tiles and flexible felt were used for the leading edge, lower surface and upper surface of airbreathing hypersonic vehicles to meet thethermal protection requirement. The thermal analysis finite element model of hypersonic vehicles was established using Abaqus. The temperature distribution and the changes during the entire flight of the vehicle under typical aerodynamic heating were calculated. The peak temperature of the leading edge was 1637℃, and the peak temperatures for the upper and lower surfaces were 635 and 805℃, verifying the effectiveness of the proposed thermal protection structure. The temperature- time curve shows that the temperature of the leading edge and upper and lower surfaces increased significantly at 500 s with a largetemperature gradient. From 500 s to 1500 s, the temperature was continuously high. The temperature decreased rapidly after 1500 s. The heat transfer models were built for evaluating the efficiency of the three typical thermal protection structures. The optimum thicknesses for the materials were obtained as 57.6, 52.9, and 53.3 mm, which may provide references for the design of thermal protection systems.

shypersonic vehicles  /  thermal protection system  /  finite element