Heat transfer analysis on thickness of fibrous insulations of metallic thermal protection system

A method that can calculate the thickness of fibrous thermal insulation in the metallic protection system was presented. A model for heat transfer of thermal insulation in metallic thermal protection system during spacecraft reentry was established by combining optical thickness approximation method and energy partial differential equation. Three kinds of fibrous thermal insulation with different densities were tested for effective conductivity coefficient. Attenuation index of fibrous thermal insulation was optimized by genetic algorithm with a part of effective conductivity data and the other part of effective conductivity data were used to validate heat transfer model. In order to make spacecraft reentry safe, thickness of different density fibrous thermal insulation were determined by simulation for reentry situation by the optimized model, and concluded that the fibrous thermal insulation with a density of 96 kg/m₃ used in the X-33 metallic thermal protection system is lightest.