Design of Lightweight Graded Hot Structures for Hypersonic Vehicles

New-type hypersonic vehicle will encounter significant challenges due to severe heating environments during its long-time hypersonic flying in the atmosphere. Therefore, resusable, lightweight, high thermal resistance and anti-collision are demanded for Thermal Protection System. Traditional thermal protection system(TPS) can’t survive extreme thermal environments. In this paper, lightweight and integrated graded hot structures which composed of functionally graded materials (FGM) are addressed according to new thermal environment. It has been established nonlinear fundamental equations for hot structures. It is significant that gradation in material properties of hot structures allows the designer to tailor thermal response to meet variable thermal environment.