Numerical investigation on the performances of porous matrix with transpiration and film cooling

Aimed at solving the thermal protection problems of the leading edge and entire structure of hypersonic vehicles synchronously, this paper presents an innovative conception of active thermal protection, which combines transpiration and film cooling within separate porous matrixes, and a coupled numerical method to simulate the combined cooling effect of the entire field. The numerical method is validated by experimental data obtained at Ma = 4.2 in an arc-heated wind tunnel. Using gaseous Nitrogen as coolant: (1) the downstream film cooling effect derived by upstream transpiration cooling is systematically investigated; (2) the comprehensive cooling effects of two layouts of porous matrix, single porous matrix (SPM) and binary porous matrixes (BPM), are compared in detail; (3) a single channel coolant supply scheme is designed to realize desired non-uniform coolant allocation for BPM. These discussions and results are valuable for the designers searching for large area thermal protection and light weight systems.