Ablative thermal protection systems have experienced renewed interest in the past decade owing to the retirement of NASA's Space Shuttle fleet and the US presidential mandate to develop technologies that enable humans to explore space beyond low Earth orbit. Blunt body architecture for spacecraft and the use of ablators for thermal protection systems returned as the primary choice in mission planning. This review addresses current progress in modernizing predictive tools for ablative material response. Current theory development leverages progress made in the theory of flows in porous media. This development, combined with progress in experimental techniques and high-end computing, is enabling the development of 3D macroscale models with realistic closure coefficients derived from direct numerical simulations of 3D microscale geometries of actual materials. While flight data quantifying ablative material response remain sparse, the next decade will be one of exploration in which heatshield instrumented spacecraft will provide crucial flight data for refining and validating closure models.

中文翻译：

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烧蚀热保护系统中的流动力学


由于 NASA 航天飞机机队的退役和美国总统授权开发使人类能够探索近地轨道以外的太空的技术，烧蚀热保护系统在过去十年中重新引起了人们的兴趣。航天器的钝体结构和在热保护系统中使用消融器再次成为任务规划的主要选择。本综述讨论了烧蚀材料反应预测工具现代化的当前进展。目前的理论发展利用了多孔介质中流动理论的进展。这一发展，结合实验技术和高端计算的进步，使 3D 宏观模型的开发成为可能，这些模型具有从实际材料的 3D 微尺度几何形状的直接数值模拟中得出的真实闭合系数。虽然量化烧蚀材料响应的飞行数据仍然稀少，但未来十年将是探索的十年，其中隔热罩仪表航天器将为改进和验证闭合模型提供关键的飞行数据。