I. Introduction

Hypersonic vehicles face rigorous thermostructural demands during endoatmospheric ascent, cruise, and reentry. Arc facilities are unique in their ability to reproduce thermal environments simulating flight from Mach 8 to 20 for the long exposure periods required to validate thermostructural performance and survivability of materials and components (Fig. 1). Such simulations typically require a test gas, usually air, heated to temperatures between 3000 and 10,000 K and supplied continuously for several minutes. Arc heaters provide an efficient, clean heating source for such simulations, and are flexible enough in their various configurations to enable aerothermal simulations for a large sector of the hypersonic velocity pressure altitude flight envelope. Consequently, arc heaters have found widespread use in both military and commercial aerospace applications for the development of high-temperature materials and structures for missiles, reentry vehicles, high-speed transports, military/civil space transportation and space access vehicles, scramjet combustors, and hypervelocity ordnance and munitions systems.1

Figure 1: Unique facility capabilities of arc heaters.

II. Arc Heaters and Hypersonic Testing