Determination of the Velocity, Density, Maximum Flux and Enthaply Profiles for a Very High Temperature Arc Jet Nozzle Flow

Hypervelocity flows for velocities is excess of 1.4 kmsec Mach 5 require very high stagnation temperature to avoid liquefaction. The arc heater wind tunnel has been designed to provide such flows. The electric-are driven wind tunnel can develop stagnation temperatures up to 13,000 K which will produce hypervelocity flows up to 7 kmsec earth orbital speed. The nature of the flow, however, is such that the high temperature source flow may cause severe gradients at the nozzle exit. In order to perform aero-thermodynamic tests the characterization of the flow in the test section is required. This paper experimentally determines the stream profiles for an arcjet wind tunnel conical nozzle directly from calorimetry and pitot probe surveys. Thesis. jhd