Experimental investigations on active cooling thermal protection structure of hydrocarbon-fueled scramjet combustor in arc heated facility

The active cooling thermal protection technology is the efficient method to resolve the long-duration work and reusable problems of hydrocarbon-fueled scramjet combustor, where worst thermo-mechanical loads occur. The fuel is passed through coolant channels adjacent to the heated surfaces to absorb heat from the heating exchanger panels, prior to injection into the combustor. The heating exchanger both cooled down the wall temperature of the combustor wall and heats and cracks the hydrocarbon fuel inside the panel to permit an easier combustion and satisfying combustion efficiency. The subscale active cooling metallic panels, with dimensions of 100×100 mm and different coolant channel sizes, have been tested under typical combustion thermal environment produced by arc heated Turbulent Flow Duct (TFD). The heat exchange ability of different coolant channel sizes has been obtained. The big-scale active cooling metallic panel, with dimensions of 100 × 750 mm and the coolant channel sizes of better heating exchange performance, has been made and tested in the big-scale arc heated TFD facility. The test results show that the local superheated ablation is easy to happen for the cooling fuel assigned asymmetrically in the bigscale active cooling metallic panel, and the cooling fuel rate can reduce 8%∼10% after spraying the Thermal Barrier Coating (TBC) in the heating surface.