Mechanism of thermomechanical coupling of high temperature heat pipe cooled C/C composite material thermal protection structure

To use heat pipe cooled thermal protection structure (TPS) is a noval efficient thermal protection method. A model of the heat pipe cooled C/C composite TPS was established herein, where the assembly relationship of the C/C composite material and the heat pipe was int roduced by the penalty method, and a finite element algorithm of the thermomechanical analysis by using the sequential coupling method was also developed. Based on the numerical method, the thermomechanical coupling and parametric analysis had been implemented. The numerical results show that, under the typical flying condition, the heat pipe cooled C/C composite TPS can make sure that the stagnation temperature is in the tolerance zone. The contact stress can be greatly reduced by allocating initial gap between the heat pipe and the thermal structure. The present method can also be used to investigate the thermomechanical coupling problems caused by thermal contact resistance.