CREARE LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF181-012

Description

Ablative coatings for hypersonics are tested at facilities such as the AEDC Range G and the Holloman High Speed Test Track. A test article is accelerated to velocity up to 18,000 ft/s in a relevant atmosphere and travels up to 10,000 ft. It is important to measure the coating erosion at multiple discrete points along the trajectory to characterize non-linear ablation response.Existing measurement techniques employ ordinary high speed photography.Evaluation of the resulting 2-D images to infer 3-D ablation is challenging and imprecise, particularly considering the refractive errors introduced by the bow shock.We will develop a novel imaging system that will freeze motion even at peak velocities, directly measure the 3-D geometry of the test article front surface, and correct for refractive errors induced by shock waves in the flow field.The result of the measurement will be a 3-D point cloud with .001 resolution that can be directly compared to a nominal model and/or to successive measurements to compute ablation rates.