Space Shuttle Thermal Protection System (TPS) 1D heat flow analysis

Intro

The heat flow across the Thermal Protection System (TPS) tiles of the STS-96 space shuttle flight was modelled during re-entry conditions. A 1D model was made using Fourier's heat equation, and the solution was obtained through four different numerical methods: forward differencing, DuFort-Frankel, backward differencing and Crank-Nicolson. The stabilities of the different methods were evaluated in respect to the time step, Δt and the spatial step, Δx.

Full Report: Numerical Modelling for the Space Shuttle Thermal Protection System

GUI Usage

1. Import .m files
2. Import .jpg temperature profiles
3. Initialise shuttleGUI_exported.m
4. Run script

Index

• plottemp.m: Converts temp###.jpg to numerical data, in Celsius
• shuttle.m: Computes temperature profile data and solves numerically for zero heat-flow (Neumann) boundary conditions
• simpleShooting.m: Utilises the shoothing method algorithm to solve for the tile thickness based on desired inner wall temperature
• stabilitySpaceTime.m: Iterates through numerical step sizes for stability analysis
• shuttleGUI_exported.m: Interactive GUI for tile thickness computation