Experimental study of a rarefied plume impinging on a cylinder-plate configuration

• We carried out experiments on a jet plume interacting on a cross cylinder followed by a circular plate.
• The pressures investigated span from continuum to transition regimes.
• A change in the behavior has been observed at the higher values of the Knudsen number.

An experimental analysis of the interaction of a rarefied jet plume with a cylinder-plate system is presented. The main goal is to show that the gas rarefaction can change the distribution of pressure between the two bodies quite unpredictably. The geometrical configuration has been proposed as test case to investigate the development of plume that are typically present in complex structures on spatial satellite. The results are qualitatively in a good agreement with analogous experiments and numerical simulations.