Flat Plate Tests of ESA IXV TPS Interfaces in L3K

The main goal of the European Space Agency (ESA) Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) programme was to verify the European capabilities in hypersonic unpowered manoeuvring re-entry flight of a lifting configuration. During its successful mission, the vehicle served as an in-flight laboratory for the qualification of vehicle subsystems and systems, and to provide another source of data on fundamental hypersonic phenomena for validation of tools, databases and design processes. Before the flight, a test campaign on the Thermal Protection System (TPS) interfaces of the IXV has been carried out in DLR's arc heated facility L3K. The objective of this experimental campaign was to qualify under hypersonic flow conditions the thermal behavior of several TPS interfaces at the maximum predicted flight heat flux and integral heat load. To this scope, three large scale test models, each reproducing a different TPS interface, were tested in flat plate configuration with an available DLR model holder under the same test conditions and duration. Three different TPS materials were investigated, a Ceramic Matrix Composite (CMC) manufactured by Safran Herakles, P50 cork composite ablative material produced by Amorin Cork Composite and SV2A silicone elastomer-based ablative material manufactured by AVIO