Emission Spectroscopic Characterization of the NASA IHF Plenum Plasma

What is it about?

Ground testing of heat shield materials is an important part of the qualification of thermal protection systems. To understand the governing processes and provide a sufficiently accurate extrapolation to flight, numerical simulation of the facility flows are an important tool. To validate such simulation capabilities, optical diagnostics in form of emission spectroscopy measurements were applied to the region inside the arc heater at the inflow section of the numerical simulation and compared to predicted emission spectra.

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